Got Empathy?
If there was anyone that really, truly and never completely in their entire life never gave a shit (for lack of a better, more descriptive expression) about anything or anyone, it was Lenny. For Lenny’s existence, from his first childhood memory up until this very day, he was classified as a “one way fuck.”
Lenny would say as a matter of fact, that “he really didn’t care about people.” That’s Lenny. He takes no offense, but believes he gives none as well. This overall world view was not rooted in any viciousness or hatred, it was organic and natural.
“Take it or leave it, it’s up to yourself.” There is no other explanation or reason. That’s Lenny, for all of his 60 years of existence. He sailed through his life with a clear conscious and not a worry in the world because he really, truly did not give a shit. “Hey, if I get cancer, what am I going to do? Tough shit, we all gotta die sometime.”
Empathy, for example, does not compute for Lenny, so he can’t understand it in others. Lenny believes if empathy exists, which he doubts, it is like charisma, “either you got it or you don’t.”
Lenny was confronted in 1972 at CCNY by a long hair, bearded, Marxist, black beret wearing, twenty eight year old UCLA Berkeley educated PhD professor. The confrontation stemmed from the communications term paper Lenny presented in class.
The professor mockingly labeled Lenny "Mr. Spock lacking the logic." Lenny was told he was “out of sync with the Age of Aquarius.” But then again, he didn’t give a shit about that either.
These days Lenny is content with life. Having made shrewd real estate investing his career, he is financially comfortable. He has never really had a real job since driving a taxi in New York City for a few years after college.
Lenny is glad he never made the mistake of getting married or even cohabiting with a woman. He has a firm conviction, based on years of experience, that “all broads are stupid.” This attitude is honestly not based on misogyny. Lenny has drawn this attitude from years of careful observation.
Women think they can change him, but they can’t. They agree to the noncommittal, just for fun arrangement prior to any sexual penetration which would lead to an exchange of bodily fluids. But invariably, they always want more in the relationship.
None of the numerous “dumpees,” as he calls them, without any malice, has never broken through to the next step of the relationship threshold. But then again, Lenny doesn’t give a shit.
He remembers twenty five years ago getting slapped in the face by Cassie, one of the more angry dumpees. As usual, first comes the female ultimatum: “What’s going on with us, I’m not getting any younger,” which was the standard opening. Immediately followed by his genuinely honest, apathetic and universal response: “I really don’t give a shit” and then, well you know the rest.
This one specific “dumpee” episode occurred on the sidewalk outside a trendy SoHo eatery. All on a romantic spring evening after giving his standard Lenny answer to Cassie’s fiery inquiry.
Cassie’s face was red with rage as she slowly spoke in a growingly loud, but quivering voice. “Name me one woman, ONE woman that ever wanted you to get married!” Lenny, paused, raised his eyes in thought, then looked her straight in the eye, and answered, “My mother?”
He didn’t mean to be insulting or funny, he just honestly answered the question, as he understood it.
WACK, her right hand, his left cheek, and then she stormed away uptown on West Broadway muttering obscenities.
Lenny just stood there watching this flibbertigibbet (his semantic substitute for “broad”) disappear and he really didn’t give a shit. That’s Lenny.
***
It is a beautiful crisp and clear Woody Allen cinema crafted New York City evening. Lenny has just arrived home from a brisk walk after a delicious Chinese meal. As Lenny gets out of the mahogany carved wood lined elevator, he is alone. Happily returning to his 2 bedroom pre-war Chelsea co-op apartment.
Lenny unlocks the apartment door, throws his keys in the usual spot and starts to settle down on his comfortable black leather oversized sofa.
The sunken living room, the fireplace, the hardwood floors, the state of the art Sub Zero kitchen, the view of the lush courtyard gardens (maintained by LaShawn and Scott the fiftyish gay bi-racial couple on the third floor) is exquisite. He takes a moment to appreciate it all.
Home Sweet Home.
Lenny thinks about the women, how without exception, he reads their body language. These cunning women who, on first sight, invariably evaluate Lenny’s apartment. “Wow, what I can do with this!”
They are so fucking predictable.
Ahead, a quiet evening of mindless entertainment that is well deserved after dealing with today’s business. This work consisted of mostly of trading stocks and investments on his computer, the short weekly meeting with his real estate contact and a vigorous physical work out at the gym. The minimal interpersonal contact lifestyle he enjoys.
Tonight is just another night, or is it?
Lenny suddenly realizes that for the first time in his life he can’t keep his mind mellow. This familiar intermittent mind twinge attack he has experienced over the past few months has begun again. This time the intensity level has now jumped from a minor annoyance to a serious concern.
As the random imagery of this attack intensifies, he tries watching Turner Classic Movies as a distraction. The attack consists of past contentious interpersonal episodes of his real life. There’s a movie going on in his head.
Could this be a revisionist interpretation of those past life episodes and the people therein? The TV goes black, as he unconsciously tries something else. The random mellow music of Sirius/XM Radio’s Seriously Sinatra fill the air. The songs are about love found and lost, bad choice.
Lenny is now worried, an emotion he has fleetingly experienced is staying and intensifying. The problem is the “I don’t give a shit” defense IS not kicking in immediately as it always has in the past.
Lenny now sits immobilized mentally in the solitude and silence of his domain, waiting not to give a shit. He jumps off the leather couch and without thinking grabs his keys and flies out the door.
He is walking down Seventh Avenue. His mind is racing, but not focused, thoughts and images jump in and out. He mutters to himself “What the hell is going on… What the hell is going on?”
Now it starts to really get weird (for Lenny, at least). Over and over in his head he can’t get rid of parts of the Rolling Stones song “Jig Saw Puzzle”.
Lenny is standing on the northwest corner of West Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenu. He turns to his left and uncontrollably mutters to the young twenty something long haired pony tailed man next to him:
Me, I'm just waiting so patiently
With my woman on the floor
We're just trying to do this jig-saw puzzle
Before it rains anymore
The young man just ignores Lenny. He is not hearing anything Lenny says. He is engrossed by the music pulsating in his wireless earbuds. The man then steps off the side walk, to navigate traffic with the typical New Yorker disregard for the flashing Don’t Walk Sign and leaves Lenny just standing there.
Lenny suddenly, has an empty feeling in his stomach, in spite of his Chinese food. He realizes that he never cared to share with any woman his views of the mystery of the life and the human experience in the universe (For lack of better terms.)
“Where did that shit come from,” Lenny asks himself.
“What the hell is going on with me?” Lenny never even gave a thought to anything as inconsequential to him in the past.
“What the hell does all that mean”? He thinks.
Introspection: The missed opportunities, flashes of that Hunter College philosophy major who wanted to draw out his inner deep thoughts.
The new wave, punk rock Zen yoga instructor he met at Max’s Kansas City in 1979 who wanted him to explore..... whatever she said it was.
“How can I give a shit about things I can’t even emotionally define?” Up until now, all his relationships were just a conglomerate of distant fragmented and meaningless memories. Now they are rapidly becoming uniquely vivid and distinctly powerful independent memories.
The smells, sights and overall ambiance of the experiences that were repressed by his “I don’t give a shit” attitude are now starting to overwhelm Lenny.
He continues to aimlessly roam the streets.
It is early morning as Lenny makes his way back to his apartment. He passes a homeless woman known as Rhonda the Skell sleeping on the subway grate for warmth. This woman has become a fixture on West Twenty Third Street like the throw away newspaper dispensers that occupy the city street scape.
It’s as if Lenny has now seen her for the first time in his life. A wave of compassion and emotion washes over his thoughts. He is waiting for the “I don’t give a shit” to override these emotions, but it does not happen.
Lenny goes over, as if on auto pilot, to the woman and places a twenty dollar bill in her empty paper coffee cup. He then walks toward his building.
Lenny is now sitting in his stainless steel Sub Zero kitchen. He has ninety nine percent reconciled the fact that humanity, the humanity that he has always believed did not exist in him or in anyone else, may have finally overtaken the old Lenny and there is possibly now a new Lenny.
As the sun breaks through the trees in the garden, Lenny begins to not give a shit, that he now gives a shit. Is this the ultimate result of years of being deficient in human sensibility, acuteness of feeling, or consideration?
Is Lenny no longer the most callous person alive?
Lenny, no longer the self described TULIP.
T.U.L.I.P, the acronym he so proudly proclaimed himself to be:
Totally Useless Lowlife Ingrate Person.
Now, is this the new, sensitive, humanist Lenny?
Lenny then turns and looks at his reflection in the stainless steel appliances of his kitchen and he stares at himself for an extended period of time. He then stands up and walks toward the window and pulls back the curtain. He begins a verbally evaluative new course for himself:
“I now must begin an inner derived self crusade.”
“I should turn over everything I have, everything I own, to help others less fortunate than I.”
“I shall seek out truth, knowledge and inner peace”
“I shall study the classics to gain more knowledge and learn deep meditation”
“I shall not rest, until I use every ounce of fiber I have to make things right”
Lenny then asks himself, one more time: “Have I been so weak, so selfish, and so unconcerned about the human condition that even my insignificant interactions with others have always had a negative energy that has made the entire world less loving, less caring and a more uninviting place for humanity?”
Do I really now GIVE A SHIT?”
Lenny looks out the window at the beautiful morning sun and it hits him: “Fuck no, I don’t give a shit, and fuck this crap, I’m gonna go get my twenty back from that skell bitch” What the hell came over me? This is some scary shit!
As he heads toward the door, Lenny then stops dead in his tracks. He begrudgingly confides to himself, “it was kind of nice to care, even if it was just for a few fleeting hours”. He continues on, then stops before grabbing his keys, and decides not to retrieve the twenty from Rhonda the Skell.
Lenny returns to his comfortable leather sofa. He sits quietly and wonders if in all of this there is an in between and if, in fact, he might enjoy that in between.
“The in between being not exactly diarrhea, but giving a healthy shit.” He laughingly thinks.
Lenny knows he’s too smart to be a chump, but too smart to continue not to a give a shit. It is Six AM and his clock radio goes off, Frank Sinatra sings “It Was a Very Good Year”.
Lenny smiles and agrees with old blue eyes that his 60th year is going to be very good year. He gets off his sofa, enters his home office, sits down at his laptop computer, and starts the search for Cassie.
Copyright 2016
If there was anyone that really, truly and never completely in their entire life never gave a shit (for lack of a better, more descriptive expression) about anything or anyone, it was Lenny. For Lenny’s existence, from his first childhood memory up until this very day, he was classified as a “one way fuck.”
Lenny would say as a matter of fact, that “he really didn’t care about people.” That’s Lenny. He takes no offense, but believes he gives none as well. This overall world view was not rooted in any viciousness or hatred, it was organic and natural.
“Take it or leave it, it’s up to yourself.” There is no other explanation or reason. That’s Lenny, for all of his 60 years of existence. He sailed through his life with a clear conscious and not a worry in the world because he really, truly did not give a shit. “Hey, if I get cancer, what am I going to do? Tough shit, we all gotta die sometime.”
Empathy, for example, does not compute for Lenny, so he can’t understand it in others. Lenny believes if empathy exists, which he doubts, it is like charisma, “either you got it or you don’t.”
Lenny was confronted in 1972 at CCNY by a long hair, bearded, Marxist, black beret wearing, twenty eight year old UCLA Berkeley educated PhD professor. The confrontation stemmed from the communications term paper Lenny presented in class.
The professor mockingly labeled Lenny "Mr. Spock lacking the logic." Lenny was told he was “out of sync with the Age of Aquarius.” But then again, he didn’t give a shit about that either.
These days Lenny is content with life. Having made shrewd real estate investing his career, he is financially comfortable. He has never really had a real job since driving a taxi in New York City for a few years after college.
Lenny is glad he never made the mistake of getting married or even cohabiting with a woman. He has a firm conviction, based on years of experience, that “all broads are stupid.” This attitude is honestly not based on misogyny. Lenny has drawn this attitude from years of careful observation.
Women think they can change him, but they can’t. They agree to the noncommittal, just for fun arrangement prior to any sexual penetration which would lead to an exchange of bodily fluids. But invariably, they always want more in the relationship.
None of the numerous “dumpees,” as he calls them, without any malice, has never broken through to the next step of the relationship threshold. But then again, Lenny doesn’t give a shit.
He remembers twenty five years ago getting slapped in the face by Cassie, one of the more angry dumpees. As usual, first comes the female ultimatum: “What’s going on with us, I’m not getting any younger,” which was the standard opening. Immediately followed by his genuinely honest, apathetic and universal response: “I really don’t give a shit” and then, well you know the rest.
This one specific “dumpee” episode occurred on the sidewalk outside a trendy SoHo eatery. All on a romantic spring evening after giving his standard Lenny answer to Cassie’s fiery inquiry.
Cassie’s face was red with rage as she slowly spoke in a growingly loud, but quivering voice. “Name me one woman, ONE woman that ever wanted you to get married!” Lenny, paused, raised his eyes in thought, then looked her straight in the eye, and answered, “My mother?”
He didn’t mean to be insulting or funny, he just honestly answered the question, as he understood it.
WACK, her right hand, his left cheek, and then she stormed away uptown on West Broadway muttering obscenities.
Lenny just stood there watching this flibbertigibbet (his semantic substitute for “broad”) disappear and he really didn’t give a shit. That’s Lenny.
***
It is a beautiful crisp and clear Woody Allen cinema crafted New York City evening. Lenny has just arrived home from a brisk walk after a delicious Chinese meal. As Lenny gets out of the mahogany carved wood lined elevator, he is alone. Happily returning to his 2 bedroom pre-war Chelsea co-op apartment.
Lenny unlocks the apartment door, throws his keys in the usual spot and starts to settle down on his comfortable black leather oversized sofa.
The sunken living room, the fireplace, the hardwood floors, the state of the art Sub Zero kitchen, the view of the lush courtyard gardens (maintained by LaShawn and Scott the fiftyish gay bi-racial couple on the third floor) is exquisite. He takes a moment to appreciate it all.
Home Sweet Home.
Lenny thinks about the women, how without exception, he reads their body language. These cunning women who, on first sight, invariably evaluate Lenny’s apartment. “Wow, what I can do with this!”
They are so fucking predictable.
Ahead, a quiet evening of mindless entertainment that is well deserved after dealing with today’s business. This work consisted of mostly of trading stocks and investments on his computer, the short weekly meeting with his real estate contact and a vigorous physical work out at the gym. The minimal interpersonal contact lifestyle he enjoys.
Tonight is just another night, or is it?
Lenny suddenly realizes that for the first time in his life he can’t keep his mind mellow. This familiar intermittent mind twinge attack he has experienced over the past few months has begun again. This time the intensity level has now jumped from a minor annoyance to a serious concern.
As the random imagery of this attack intensifies, he tries watching Turner Classic Movies as a distraction. The attack consists of past contentious interpersonal episodes of his real life. There’s a movie going on in his head.
Could this be a revisionist interpretation of those past life episodes and the people therein? The TV goes black, as he unconsciously tries something else. The random mellow music of Sirius/XM Radio’s Seriously Sinatra fill the air. The songs are about love found and lost, bad choice.
Lenny is now worried, an emotion he has fleetingly experienced is staying and intensifying. The problem is the “I don’t give a shit” defense IS not kicking in immediately as it always has in the past.
Lenny now sits immobilized mentally in the solitude and silence of his domain, waiting not to give a shit. He jumps off the leather couch and without thinking grabs his keys and flies out the door.
He is walking down Seventh Avenue. His mind is racing, but not focused, thoughts and images jump in and out. He mutters to himself “What the hell is going on… What the hell is going on?”
Now it starts to really get weird (for Lenny, at least). Over and over in his head he can’t get rid of parts of the Rolling Stones song “Jig Saw Puzzle”.
Lenny is standing on the northwest corner of West Fourteenth Street and Seventh Avenu. He turns to his left and uncontrollably mutters to the young twenty something long haired pony tailed man next to him:
Me, I'm just waiting so patiently
With my woman on the floor
We're just trying to do this jig-saw puzzle
Before it rains anymore
The young man just ignores Lenny. He is not hearing anything Lenny says. He is engrossed by the music pulsating in his wireless earbuds. The man then steps off the side walk, to navigate traffic with the typical New Yorker disregard for the flashing Don’t Walk Sign and leaves Lenny just standing there.
Lenny suddenly, has an empty feeling in his stomach, in spite of his Chinese food. He realizes that he never cared to share with any woman his views of the mystery of the life and the human experience in the universe (For lack of better terms.)
“Where did that shit come from,” Lenny asks himself.
“What the hell is going on with me?” Lenny never even gave a thought to anything as inconsequential to him in the past.
“What the hell does all that mean”? He thinks.
Introspection: The missed opportunities, flashes of that Hunter College philosophy major who wanted to draw out his inner deep thoughts.
The new wave, punk rock Zen yoga instructor he met at Max’s Kansas City in 1979 who wanted him to explore..... whatever she said it was.
“How can I give a shit about things I can’t even emotionally define?” Up until now, all his relationships were just a conglomerate of distant fragmented and meaningless memories. Now they are rapidly becoming uniquely vivid and distinctly powerful independent memories.
The smells, sights and overall ambiance of the experiences that were repressed by his “I don’t give a shit” attitude are now starting to overwhelm Lenny.
He continues to aimlessly roam the streets.
It is early morning as Lenny makes his way back to his apartment. He passes a homeless woman known as Rhonda the Skell sleeping on the subway grate for warmth. This woman has become a fixture on West Twenty Third Street like the throw away newspaper dispensers that occupy the city street scape.
It’s as if Lenny has now seen her for the first time in his life. A wave of compassion and emotion washes over his thoughts. He is waiting for the “I don’t give a shit” to override these emotions, but it does not happen.
Lenny goes over, as if on auto pilot, to the woman and places a twenty dollar bill in her empty paper coffee cup. He then walks toward his building.
Lenny is now sitting in his stainless steel Sub Zero kitchen. He has ninety nine percent reconciled the fact that humanity, the humanity that he has always believed did not exist in him or in anyone else, may have finally overtaken the old Lenny and there is possibly now a new Lenny.
As the sun breaks through the trees in the garden, Lenny begins to not give a shit, that he now gives a shit. Is this the ultimate result of years of being deficient in human sensibility, acuteness of feeling, or consideration?
Is Lenny no longer the most callous person alive?
Lenny, no longer the self described TULIP.
T.U.L.I.P, the acronym he so proudly proclaimed himself to be:
Totally Useless Lowlife Ingrate Person.
Now, is this the new, sensitive, humanist Lenny?
Lenny then turns and looks at his reflection in the stainless steel appliances of his kitchen and he stares at himself for an extended period of time. He then stands up and walks toward the window and pulls back the curtain. He begins a verbally evaluative new course for himself:
“I now must begin an inner derived self crusade.”
“I should turn over everything I have, everything I own, to help others less fortunate than I.”
“I shall seek out truth, knowledge and inner peace”
“I shall study the classics to gain more knowledge and learn deep meditation”
“I shall not rest, until I use every ounce of fiber I have to make things right”
Lenny then asks himself, one more time: “Have I been so weak, so selfish, and so unconcerned about the human condition that even my insignificant interactions with others have always had a negative energy that has made the entire world less loving, less caring and a more uninviting place for humanity?”
Do I really now GIVE A SHIT?”
Lenny looks out the window at the beautiful morning sun and it hits him: “Fuck no, I don’t give a shit, and fuck this crap, I’m gonna go get my twenty back from that skell bitch” What the hell came over me? This is some scary shit!
As he heads toward the door, Lenny then stops dead in his tracks. He begrudgingly confides to himself, “it was kind of nice to care, even if it was just for a few fleeting hours”. He continues on, then stops before grabbing his keys, and decides not to retrieve the twenty from Rhonda the Skell.
Lenny returns to his comfortable leather sofa. He sits quietly and wonders if in all of this there is an in between and if, in fact, he might enjoy that in between.
“The in between being not exactly diarrhea, but giving a healthy shit.” He laughingly thinks.
Lenny knows he’s too smart to be a chump, but too smart to continue not to a give a shit. It is Six AM and his clock radio goes off, Frank Sinatra sings “It Was a Very Good Year”.
Lenny smiles and agrees with old blue eyes that his 60th year is going to be very good year. He gets off his sofa, enters his home office, sits down at his laptop computer, and starts the search for Cassie.
Copyright 2016