Prologue 001 - I Don't Know You

ONE YEAR BEFORE THE BUCHAREST PHONE CALL

Vin said it best… Trust me. I didn’t see this gut-wrench coming.

What is Sameness?

I now know who kidnapped our distinctiveness. Unfortunately it’s an old partner of mine. Goes by the noun Sameness.

Sameness is a field of yellow tulips. Not a thousand. Not ten. An empire of mustard yellow stretching longer than the Sahara.

Magnificent at first sight. You inhale … your nose hairs dance. By mile marker seven … More yellow tulips. And More. You’d chew curled milk for a pop of red. A purple daisy.

Anything new.

Sameness whispers soul-sucking opinions: “Continue as you are. Nothing to see here. Move along. Don’t change. Don’t grow. Don’t evolve. Keep scrolling. Consume like mad-folk. Linger in your comfort zone. Mummify yourself.”

We oblige. Because sameness is so 21st century cool.

Sameness winks “attabot” every time I copy Instagram outfits or spanking new Twitter marketing playbooks.

Sameness hates my point of view. Shoots down every cockamamie idea. Alters my every independent step. Sends me toward the gallows of mediocrity.

I almost fell victim to the gallows once.

Almost felt the rope kiss my neck.

Almost heard the hangman clear his throat for one final act.

WINTER 2020

Winter by name, not temperature. This woe-is-me scene takes place in Florida, after all.

I can be entirely unreasonable. Craft cocktails are my passion when feeling particularly gloomy. Alcohol funds sour moods with poor decisions most Saturday nights.

This one was different.

I’m romanticizing single life at The Gin Joint, my favorite watering hole in downtown Tampa, a lovely dark-lit den known for beautiful people, jazz and gin of course. The type of juke joint known for jawdropping Manhattan’s from artists who won’t dare judge you for ordering three before vittles.

70’s jams command swaying hips. Lovely couples everywhere, cupcaking and canoodling as expected. Beautiful people doing beautiful people things. And me.

I’m seated beside… Well. Nobody.

Who am I kidding? Sitting alone at the bar, forty years old. Heartbroken. Dripping in Saint Laurent, drinking like Norm from Cheers.

Not totally alone. There’s a middle age, we-found-a-Craigslist-babysitter-for-an-hour couple three seats down, reeking of teenage Zara.

On my left a cannabis smelling, stunning, golden skinned Black woman who resembled Mel B and is completely ignoring my existence. Her boyfriend, some mogul specializing in muffin top shows up fashionably late - built like Norm from Cheers dry of one-liners.

Looking around at every happy smile, every perfect life, every predictable, comfortable, same existence. And that’s when it hit me.

I’d become them…

Not the couples. Not Norm.

Everyone.

Every other “successful” American male with a nice apartment, nice car, nice things, nice life. I’d optimized my entire existence to look good on social feeds.

Three days earlier, Jessica had looked at me and said the words I’ll never forget: “I don’t know you.”

Days earlier.

My apartment.

The one I’d furnished with Crate & Barrel everything like I was a budget Kardashian.

Designer shoes lined up like Roman soldiers awaiting orders. Hundereds of niche fragrances also commanding attention. Vuitton bags. Rimowa suitcases. Two cars resting in the lot like gas guzzling hounds.

Jessica stood there, teary eyed, fresh out of love. Ready to deploy relationship-ending words.

“I don’t know you,” she said with-eyed innocence, emotions held at bay under deep sniffles.

She was right.

She didn’t know me. She only watched a material man play his charade - abdicating his character for money, status and luxuries.

She had no idea Andre Rieu is my favorite musician. Lisbon, my favorite city. That I travel the world learning local dishes and national cocktails. That I memorized every song in the Sound of Music. That I ugly cry to beautiful performances like Richard Tucker’s Vesti la Giubba or Colm Wilkinson’s version of Bring Him Home. She has no idea white hydrangeas are my favorite flower. She has no idea I have an inpregnable knowledge of history, culture, and design. She has no idea singing Hallelujah with Choir! Choir! Choir! is a bucket list moment.

I picked a good girl. Not my soulmate. Not my best friend. Not my other half. Not someone to open up to.

THE JESSICA CONUNDRUM

Beautiful woman. Spokeswoman for freckled-faced Europeans. Kind. Stable. Firmly established in her community, home, and career as a designer. The type of woman wooden-spoon-swinging grandmas demand their grandsons settle down with.

Jessica loved indoor life. Miami heat. Home life. Belly laughs over Scrabble boards. Sunday family dinners. She loved routine. Predictability. She lived regimented and adored Florida’s suffocating humidity.

Shape? Not so much. I’d moved to Florida years earlier on a whim. No plans. No foundation. Just an itch that needed scratching. Yearnings for something interesting.

You see the problem.

I checked out. Picked a good girl who wasn’t for me. Convinced myself that settling down = adulthood.

That burning through luxury = success. That this is what grown men do.

I told myself: “You’re forty. Time to be normal. Time to look like, talk like, create like, live like everyone else.” Sameness whispered: “This is what successful men do. They buy nice things. Find nice women. Build comfortable lives. Stop fighting it.” I obliged.

Just like my father listened when sameness told him to disappear. Different roads. Same Rome.

But here’s the thing about playing a role. Eventually, even the people who love you stop recognizing you. “I don’t know you,” Jessica said. And I realized: I don’t know me either.

BACK TO THE GIN JOINT

So here we are.

Fourth Manhattan. Three sliders down and a basket of fries gone. Saint Laurent suit getting tighter.

Surrounded by people living comforable, predictable lives.

I play Jessica’s words back like a broken record. About how I’d become unrecognizable. Thinking about how my father chose sameness by disappearing. Thinking about how I chose sameness by showing up—with the exact same script every other “successful” modern man follows.

Mom raised me to transcend expectations. I became… Instagram ordinary.

Lemme tell you… Sameness in a Saint Laurent suit is still sameness. Just more expensive.

I look down at my Manhattan. And I think… I’m selling everything. Not just the apartment. Not just the cars. Not just the stuff. Everything. The whole script. The whole comfortable, predictable, interchangeable life.

But selling wasn’t enough. I needed a mission. A reason to abandon ship. Something to chase. That’s when it hit me.

I’m going hunting. Not for deals on flights or cheap Airbnbs. For people. People who haven’t become same. Craftsman who still make by hand. Tech founders who lead with style, character and pizzazz. Makers who resonate first, scale second. Lives lived unteathered to algorithms

I’ll find them. Document them. Learn from them. Before the machines turn me fully interchangeable.

I didn’t have the words yet. But sitting there sixth Manhattan down, surrounded by beautiful sameness, I made a decision.

I’d dust of mom’s old blueprint. I’d go back to becoming a Shapeshyfter.

Two hundered bucks later, the bartender pours me water. I don’t drink it. I leave the cash on the bar and skedaddle.

Time to plan.

THE SAMENESS CREEP

Sameness is a silent tune of influence. Not a bass-fueled musical score attached to Stormtroopers entering dramatic scenes. Sameness creeps, it doesn’t announce itself.

Mom raised me up a Shapeshyfter. I’m a darling child living on the fringes of racial and social expectations. I’m comfortable anywhere. Asymmetrical. Trapped nowhere. Adaptable to any environment - safe or hair raising.

“Be all things to all people,” she’d say, quoting Paul. “But never lose yourself.”

She raised a Decepticon. A pattern eraser. A script shredder. She raised me to build a life nobody could predict.

And for years? I did.

Then somewhere around 2016, I stopped shapeshyfting. Started… settling. Not romantically—though yeah, that too. I settled into sameness.

TAMPA, FLORIDA - THE LIQUIDATION

Tampa. Capital of cool, second to no other metropolis in Florida if you’re a Californian like me.

A city of many talents: It’s got charm. Quirk. Character. A vibrant sports scene if you dig ball-throwing.

(I don’t.)

Tampa eludes cookie-cutter soullessness found in Fort Lauderdale. Near zero old-money pretension like West Palm Beach. Not a house of fake mirrors and bolt-on body parts like Miami.

Tampa offers words of affirmation to ears that perk.

Those of artistic, cultural, and creative proportions. Those desiring a dwelling place that’s not too slow, not too fast. Just right.

The shopping sucks. The food is good. Nightlife’s great for craft drinkers.

It’s summertime hot, but doable. Hurricanes rarely make an appearance.

There’s a job market. Decent housing.

And now, because of my overwhelming generosity, much better-dressed people.

Yeah. I did a thing.

THE GREAT PURGE

Sold the cars.

Gave away all but my favorite made-to-measure suit.

Ferragamo, Saint Laurent, Prada, Bontoni, Tom Ford shoes—gone.

Hundreds of niche fragrances worth thousands—gone.

Louis Vuitton bags, designer jackets, watches—sold.

Apartment full of Crate & Barrel furniture—empty.

I sold most things. Made a healthy $20K off eBay alone. Gave away the rest.

Distilled my entire life down to two suitcases and two U-Haul shipping boxes.

Currently living in a friend’s attic in South West Ranches. Still there to this day.

One undeniable truth:

Sameness compounds.

After devoting years to a pursuit of meaningless stuff, to making meaningless work, it would be such a shame in my mid years to not try and make something meaningful.

I curated an image. Curatated a lifestyle. Built a Twitter-like email marketing company. Created the same work as every other email marketing company.

I became interchangeable.

Any other “successful” American male could walk into my apartment, put on my clothes, drive my cars, and nobody would notice the difference.

Because I’d become same.

My father’s sameness was absence.

Mine was presence—the wrong kind of presence.

Showing up to a life that wasn’t mine. Playing a role written for someone else.

THE AI WAKE-UP CALL

Every reawakening has a catalyst. An extinction level event. Dinosaurs had an asteroid. Romans, the Visigoths. Babylonians, the Persians. Mayans, the drought. We, the Machines.

AI is coming for sameness.

Not jobs. Sameness.

If you’re interchangeable—if your skills, your lifestyle, your thoughts, your existence can be replicated by someone (or something) else, you’re toast by the hands of ones and zeros.

AI doesn’t threaten the unique.

It threatens the same.

Mom understood this in 1983, long before AI existed.

She looked at the sameness threatening her sons, the cultural script that said Black boys in America follow predictable patterns, end up in predictable places, and said:

Absolutely not.

She raised us to be uninterchangeable.

And for forty years, I lived that way.

Until I forgot.

Until I chose the comfortable path.

Until I became just another guy chasing money, cars, meh work, and creature comforts.

Until Jessica left and I realized…

I’d stopped being a shapeshyfter.

I’d become a shape.

A predictable, replicable, interchangeable shape.

Shape