Escape from Brooklyn Heights

My oldest son turned four a few days ago. His younger brother will be three later this year. When we celebrate their birthdays, I celebrate my birth into fatherhood: a new dad, living in Brooklyn, a pandemic daddy — trying to do what’s best for my family.

I love my boys and my wife who gifted them to me. But I have thought of abandoning them.

Why?

Because single mothers are heroes.

If you think it takes a village to raise a child, you better be real picky about who you let into your village.

And what kind of man would I be to stand in the way of my wife becoming a hero? The best way for me to fight the patriarchy is to stop being a patriarch.

Yeah, if I were still living in Brooklyn, that would be the way. But I don’t live in Brooklyn anymore. Oh, my poor wife and kids.

This used to be my playground

Before the kids, there was Brooklyn Heights. Before COVID, there was Brooklyn Heights. What I miss most about the Heights is walking. My wife and I took frequent strolls through the neighborhood. One Sunday, I think we left the apartment five times to take a different route. When she was pregnant with our first, the further along into her pregnancy she got, the more her pace slowed and the distance we traveled shortened. But any amount of time outside was important.

When the weather is right in New York City, you forget about how most of the year it’s awful. With the right amount of sun, air, and humor, you can even forget that you’re living through a pandemic.

“I can’t believe you’re bringing a child into the world during a plague!” one might say.

Well, can you think of a better time to repopulate the Earth?

We brought our son home from the hospital — normally they hold mommy and baby for 48 hours, but with COVID-19 creeping around, they were released 24 hours earlier than usual.

In the days following his birth, we made sure to continue our walks. We had a third wheel now to slow us down, but he was in a Doona: an infant car seat that also transforms into a stroller. So, with alternate side-parking rules suspended indefinitely and no telling what future mayoral decrees would bring, we were ready to collapse the stroller, strap it into the backseat of our Honda, and hightail it out of the city if we felt the heat around the corner.

One morning on our way to the Promenade, my wife and I noticed that the gate to the Pierrepont Playground was chained shut. Sure, our son was too small to play on any of the equipment. But even though we sometimes felt like we were the last people on Earth, we knew that wasn’t the case. There were other children out there — stuck indoors — because good people “followed the science” and closed down the monkey bars.

The playgrounds were finally reopened in late June, with dog parks to follow. I sat on a bench outside the Pierrepont Playground one afternoon with my son in my arms. The playground was filled with kids of all ages and adults wearing face-coverings.

Inequality is real! I thought, looking at the adults. Some parents aren’t wealthy enough to afford au pairs from Europe, so they have to settle for nannies from Central America.

Orange you glad I didn't say 'Trump'?

An old woman sitting on a bench next to ours got my attention. She was in love with my son, she said, and wanted to take him home.

It would be easy to go down the creepy path — go down that way if you want to — but that’s not what this was about. This woman was in her 80s and had been locked up inside her home for the past few months. It would drive me crazy, I know, but she was all there. COVID-19 really had it out for people her age — and I’m sure she knew that — but the playgrounds were open again. It was perfect outside. And she had just met a gorgeous lil baby named Andreas.

I noticed she wore her blue surgical mask around her neck and had a hardcover book with her. I was maskless too and asked her what she was reading.

It was "Fear: Trump in the White House" by Bob Woodward. Oh no! I thought. Please don’t let this be the last book this woman reads before she dies! (Let my book be the last book she reads before she dies.)

No, I hadn’t read the book — and I still haven’t — but I had spent years watching people allow Donald Trump to consume their lives. Funny people stopped being funny and started being “brave.” Entire personas online centered on being blocked by the 45th president of the United States. And somehow Trump was responsible for, among many things, the nation’s mental health crisis, lack of sex, and at least one hurricane.

At Aretha Franklin’s funeral service in 2018, Michael Eric Dyson took the opportunity to destroy Trump.

“You lugubrious leech,” he said. “You dopey doppelgänger of deceit and deviance, you lethal liar, you dim-witted dictator, you foolish fascist.”

I found it unfortunate that Dyson chose to hammer Trump at the funeral for the Queen of Soul. What was also unfortunate was that he used the word “doppelgänger” incorrectly.

Doppelgänger is an apparition or double of a living person. It’s not an apparition or double of an idea.

So, something like “deceit and deviance incarnate” would have been correct. Or, if you’re going for rhythm and meaning, something like, “You insipid incarnation of deceit and deviance ...” I think that would have gone well with Dyson’s “orange apparition.”

While Dyson was applauded for destroying Trump, the president was the real winner. The man managed to crash the celebration of one diva’s incredible life without even being there.

If Trump was the “orange apparition” of which Dyson spoke, you can blame Dyson’s own words for summoning it.

When it comes time for my funeral, it better be all about me.

Happy feet

I spoke with the old woman on the bench for some time.

I could tell it had been awhile since her last conversation with someone. It was like that with a lot of people coming out of lockdown. Before I left, I wanted to give her a hug — but I knew letting her hold my son would mean more to her.

I couldn’t do that though. Not because of social distancing. But because my wife and I had a whole roster of quarantined loved ones who had yet to hold our baby. It wouldn’t be right.

So, I asked the old woman if she would like to touch my son’s feet.

Without waiting for her to answer, I took off his socks and put them in my pocket.

I held him in front of her, and she took his feet, one in each hand. She was gentle. She wanted to take him home.

It’s amazing how much joy one baby’s existence can bring into the world.

I thanked her and brought my son back home to our one-bedroom apartment.

From time to time, I think about that old woman. My son has grown a lot since then — he’s been walking longer than he crawled — but his feet still have that ridiculous baby magic to them. I’m fortunate to have them nearby.

During the plague, I became a pandemic daddy, lost my job, buried a friend, was labeled a “far-right radical,” then unlabeled, went a little crazy, sold an apartment in BK, and bought a house in the sticks.

While I worked on my book, my family was unable to live in that house in the sticks, because it had been gutted and made unlivable — a full reno. So, we were crammed in with my in-laws, while I hoped to finish the manuscript before our new baby arrived.

Yeah, my wife was pregnant again — we were taking this repopulate-the-planet thing seriously. And in the months following the birth of lil brother, I was gonna need more happy baby feet. I’m a comedian, after all, and was trying to figure out my future prospects.

While the pandemic and the responses to it hurt far too many people, I am one of the fortunate ones. I grew — as a husband, a father, and a comedian. Some days I feel like an outlier. Because those who went insane under Trump have stayed insane.

(Privilege) check, please!

If Trump broke you, Biden can’t fix you.

Even though we moved out of Brooklyn Heights I kept my account on the Nextdoor app, so I can check in on my old neighborhood. It feels like I’m stalking an ex-girlfriend whose life is getting worse and worse without me in it.

I read that there’s a “Parking Menace” on one block, hogging multiple spots, and a “Phantom Sh**ter” on the other, who marks his territory on the sidewalk. A spotted lanternfly was spotted in the ‘hood and an unleashed pit bull, too. Concerned residents are asking questions, like how to deal with homeless men chasing after you; when, if ever, to call the police on a person of color; and “Public Shaming Etiquette” when it comes to masks.

I am happy to be out. If you think it takes a village to raise a child, you better be real picky about who you let into your village.

What’s clear is that the same people who ruined Facebook are ruining Nextdoor — s***ty people who take pride in not living their lives and do all they can to inject themselves and their strain of politics into yours and mine. You do not want these people giving your eulogy.

A flier taped to a lamppost near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was promoting a community get-together — catered by Bakers Against Racism. According to Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of "How to Be an Antiracist," you’re either an anti-racist baker or you’re a racist baker. There is no such thing as a “not-racist” baker. Keep that in mind the next time you’re buying a black-and-white cookie from that spot in Carroll Gardens.

I got an email from a local restaurant my wife and I used to frequent. It reads in part (emphases mine):

Now as we more actively pursue the imperfect work of unpacking our own privilege we are revising our sense of purpose in the face of systemic racism and white supremacy. This is work we have supported over the years, but we haven’t been sufficiently resolute in prioritizing antiracism as a practice. We are grateful for the Black activists and our colleagues of color whose efforts have built the framework for becoming more effective allies.

Bro ... I thought. You’re a restaurant.

I know it’s hard enough to run a business under normal conditions. Imagine trying to do it during a pandemic with government-mandated lockdowns and Kafkaesque regulations. So many restaurants were hurting. Some managed to eke out a few more months of hurt before closing for good.

But “prioritizing antiracism as a practice” and the other woke boilerplate I highlighted above aren’t the ingredients to help a restaurant achieve what should be its primary goal: to make food people will pay to eat.

The last time my wife and I ate at this place, I don’t remember if the dishes were sufficiently anti-racist, but I do remember them being more than sufficiently salty. You’re not going to make a dent in systemic racism and white supremacy with all that sodium. (Although you might raise the blood pressure on what’s left of your primarily white bougie clientele.)

Whatever your activism is, nobody wants to be force-fed it. Especially if it’s a humorless, joyless, anti-life dish that sucks the taste out of everything.