Clio

 

Time was, I didn’t need much to be happy. And that was good because I didn’t have a lot. Or at least not relative to what I have today.

Whether that period of contented economy was a lifetime ago or just yesterday depends on my manic cycles. Episodes, anxious as they are, at least offer a reprieve from the doleful nostalgia that otherwise defines my existence.

Cruelly, that same wistful despondency animates my best writing. So, when it’s time to pen the autobiographical “fiction” many readers have come to recognize as the soul of my work, I have to engineer a bipolar crash.

Part and parcel of my memoirs is the glorification of a once-upon-a-time self. And delusions of grandeur are a symptom of mania. But manic episodes tend to be forward-looking insomuch as they’re characterized by goal-driven behavior. (And setting aside that mania can manifest in dangerous myopia when it comes to decision-making.)

By contrast, my self-aggrandizing is retrospective — it’s backward-looking. My muse is Clio, and I know where to find her: At the depths of post-manic depression, which is at least safer terrain than the bottom of a Laphroaig bottle.

I’ve trained myself to find those depths more or less at will using cues — music and other artifacts of yesteryear’s culture. Once I’m there, yesteryear‘s indistinguishable from yesterday. And yesterday, all I had was a 375ml bottle of Hennessy, a rented townhouse with spacious closets and what, at the time, was my dream car, an Acura CL Type-S.

Under the influence

 

In 1992, Marsha Richins, then an associate professor of marketing at the University of Missouri, and Scott Dawson, then an associate professor of marketing at Portland State University, set about developing a more rigorous approach to measuring materialism.

Their framework, which would go on to become one of the most well-known and widely-employed methodologies for assessing consumer behavior, was billed as an effort to supplant a patchwork approach deemed by Richins and Dawson as wholly insufficient to a task they readily conceded was daunting.

“Many of the measures do not possess adequate levels of reliability for use in anything except exploratory research,” they wrote, more than 30 years ago. “This is not surprising, perhaps, given the difficulty of measuring a complex construct like materialism.”

Their answer was a scaled approach and their methodology addressed shortcomings in previous attempts to assess consumer values with ranking scales. They retained the view that materialism is itself a value and proceeding from that, measured a trio of relevant “beliefs”: Whether the acquisition of “stuff,” so to speak, is central to a person’s life, whether any such centrality makes possessions synonymous with happiness and whether a given person tends to equate success with “the number and quality of possessions accumulated,” as Richins and Dawson put it.

They called those three beliefs “correlated aspects of materialism” and from them, Richins and Dawson derived a scale which they found to be reliable and valid. One goal of the exercise was to encourage those interested in measuring consumer behavior to use a “multiple-item” approach for individual values, values being “complex phenomena.” Another aim was to prompt more research on materialism, including “investigations into its antecedents and consequences.”

The Richins and Dawson method is known today as the Material Values Scale (MVS) and it’s used widely in marketing research. In its original form, the MVS used 18 items to assess materialism across the three dimensions mentioned above. In 2004, over a decade after it was first conceived, Richins recommended a revised, 15-item version.

Not surprisingly, Richins, Dawson and the MVS come up again and again in the research on modern materialism, where “modern” primarily refers to consumerism in the social media era.

For example, a German version of the 15-item MVS was used in a March 2024 study which delineated, in excruciating detail, how social media presents materialists “new opportunities to pursue and satisfy their needs and goals.”

The study, published in Telematics and Informatics Reports (a cross-disciplinary journal that investigates the psychosocial effects of social media use, among other things), laid out extensive evidence in support of the notion that the inherently comparative nature of materialism is highly conducive to the habitual use of social media.

As the authors, including Phillip Ozimek, a professor of organizational psychology at a private university in Germany, put it, social media “presents a plethora of opportunities” to compare one’s material lot in life to that of others.

Writing for the online mental health hub Psychology Today, one widely-published molecular biologist described that study as particularly alarming for the detail the authors employed while describing the feedback loops. “The results [show] that social media can lead to a downward spiral of anxiety and unhappiness, especially in those with a materialistic mindset,” he warned, on the way to lamenting a self-referential “trap.” “Materialistic individuals run a greater risk of social media addiction [and] social media use was found to fuel materialistic values,” he said.

The vectors on which social media and materialism reinforce and enhance one another are many. “Social media are in part a display of successes, which frequently are embodied in material objects,” Ozimek and his co-authors wrote. That’s catnip for materialists obsessed with “the possession of valuable objects” not just for their own sake, but also for the extent to which those objects are proxies for achievement. Social media thus becomes primarily a means of comparing one’s own possessions with those of others, with the latter viewed as “a benchmark of success.” Ultimately, social media’s particularly addictive for those who score highly on measures of materialism.

A May 2024 study published in a journal dedicated to the intersection of infotech and education suggested Instagram’s especially effective at promoting materialism. As the authors put it, the site “has a platform-specific effect” on users who tend to be more materialistic than those who primarily use other social media. The study measured materialism using the MVS.

That result points to something subtly nefarious about Instagram, which is described by some as a sort of escape from the often poisonous rhetoric found on other social platforms. Instagram may seem harmless compared to, say, Elon Musk’s “X,” but to the extent it’s a place where people go to make the sort of “Keeping up with the Joneses” comparisons many argue are responsible for America’s doom-scrolling mental health crisis, Instagram may actually be worse, particularly for younger users.

Indeed, study after study suggests Instagram is the worst offender when it comes to fostering so-called Problematic Social Media Use (PSMU). In 2021, for example, researchers writing in the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science found that Instagram users “exhibited significantly higher problematic use behavior compared to Facebook users.”

While assessing Instagram’s impact on young adult health outcomes in India for a 2025 study published in Annals of Neurosciences, researchers wrote that younger users “compare their own lives to the highlight reels they see, potentially leading to lowered self-esteem, envy or a sense of missing out.”

That speaks directly to the materialism link, as does a 2023 study published in Behavior & Information Technology. “Instagram intensity [is] a significant predictor of materialism via social comparison and identification with influencers,” the authors wrote.

As far back as 2017, Instagram was accused by The Royal Society for Public Health (a UK charity and the world’s oldest public health organization) of being “the most detrimental [platform] to young people’s mental health and wellbeing.”

Nearly a decade on from that rather damning pronouncement, it’s so bad that researchers now delineate between generalized PSMU and an Instagram-specific behavioral disorder dubbed PIU, “Problematic Instagram Use.”

Instagram’s infamous influencer culture is, by most academic accounts (and certainly according to common sense), a significant driver of materialism, and the phenomenon’s observable across countries.

In a 2024 study published by an open access journal, South Korean academics found that exposure to social media influencers flaunting “a noticeably luxurious lifestyle,” tends to “trigger social comparisons and FOMO, subsequently influencing the acquisition of conspicuous products.”

Similarly, a 2024 cross-sectional survey of more than 700 Chinese college students found that “high intensity” social media users have less self-control, “which relates to stronger materialistic values.” The study utilized a version of the MVS to assess materialism.

A year later, academics in Malaysia were even more explicit about the link. Social media influencers “seamlessly integrate brand endorsements into their curated lives, blurr[ing] the line between aspiration and consumerism,” the authors wrote. “This shift has not only changed how individuals engage with content but also sparked concerns about its impact on mental well-being, financial habits and societal values.”

The title of that study, published in the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, described the mechanism in colloquial terms: “They Post, I Scroll, I Envy, I Buy.”

In 2025, researchers in India set about “assess[ing] the impact of Instagram engagement metrics on consumer adoption of luxury products.” Although the results admitted of numerous caveats and more than a little nuance (this was a case where the methodology was, I’d argue, too rigorous), the mere fact that this is its own specialized field of inquiry speaks volumes.

In a separate 2025 study, academics in Pakistan explored Instagram influencers’ capacity to change the “luxury purchasing behavior” of Millennial working women. The results were mixed, but again, the fact that this research question’s on its way to achieving global, cross-disciplinary ubiquity is a testament to the symbiotic relationship between social media, particularly Instagram, and materialism in its most extreme form, that of conspicuous consumption of luxury goods.

Late last year, Statista’s consumer insights service demonstrated a marked increase in the share of consumers across locales who made purchasing decisions based on social media influencers.

The figure above gives you a sense of the trend. In just five years, the share of purchase decisions “informed” by influencers is up dramatically in most major consumer markets.

According to the BBB National Programs’ Influencer Trust Index, nearly 83% of US marketers used influencers in 2024 and nearly six in 10 adult consumers admit they’ve bought something because an influencer endorsed it, despite what the report called “waning” trust.

Market research firm EMarketer estimates influencer marketing spend will grow nearly 16% in 2026, and should approach $14 billion by 2027.

The figure above shows platform preferences for marketers. As you can see, Instagram’s dominated for years, but TikTok was already making rapid gains at the expense of everything except Instagram, and that was before the Trump administration settled legal ambiguity around the platform.

On March 3, Influencer Marketing Hub (which is exactly what it sounds like: A resource for influencers and the people who pay them) released their flagship annual report on marketer spending intentions.

In the survey, nearly a third of marketing professionals said TikTok’s a part of their influencer plans for 2026. As the figure below shows, no other platform came close on investment intent. Instagram was a distant second at 15%.

The influencer market, the accompanying color said, is “behaving like a ‘single primary platform bet’.” Another notable from the poll: Almost three quarters of marketers expect to increase their influencer budgets by 50% or more.

If your next question is whether there’s a burgeoning body of research on TikTok’s capacity to drive materialism and conspicuous consumption in the form of luxury goods purchases, the answer’s “yes.”

In 2023, someone writing for the opinion section of The University of Calgary’s student-run newspaper — an institution with an impressive 65-year track record — went out on a limb to declare that “everyone on TikTok has at some point been influenced to make a purchase after watching a video.” The author subsequently warned that “the materialistic environment created on TikTok stretches far beyond inspiring a few indulgent purchases here and there.”

A March 2025 paper posted to the London School of Economics and Political Science’s asset library describes TikTok as “a consumption trap.” “Flow experience, the state in which an individual engages in an activity with complete focus and involvement, is induced at the highest rate by TikTok compared to other social media platforms,” the authors wrote, adding that such “flow” is conducive to “time distortion,” which in turn “causes excessive engagement and increased exposure to materialism, as well as a feeling of telepresence which is positively correlated to… impulse buying.”

Indeed, an entire culture has grown up around TikTok-driven impulse buying. There are innumerable online groups dedicated to the phenomenon, which TikTok naturally uses as a magnet for advertising dollars. “TikTok is known for sparking trends and inspiring shoppers,” the platform says, in a pitch to marketers who the company entreats to “Join the ‘TikTok made me buy it party’ and discover unique opportunities to connect with your target.”

Earlier this year, Bucharest-based interior design firm AweDeco estimated that Americans spend an average $1,600 per year on impulsive home decor purchases, “much of it driven by viral design trends on TikTok and Instagram.”

The total cost of those purchases is estimated at $8.7 billion annually, and most of the items are “abandoned within six to 12 months,” according to the analysis. TikTok and Instagram, the study said, are trapping Americans “in a costly cycle of viral trend-chasing that’s leaving them financially drained and emotionally exhausted.”

Electric green

 

These days, with the taboo around cannabis cultivation largely lifted, marijuana grow lights are cheap and safe, good seeds are easy to come by, supply shops don’t insist you pretend to be a tomato farmer and thanks to the internet, you no longer have to source instructional material from Books-A-Million, where prudish clerks would just as soon “citizen arrest” you, Gomer Pyle-style, as sell you another grower’s guide.

But indoor, for-profit horticulture wasn’t always something just any idiot could do safely, let alone succeed at. Way back when, if you wanted to grow quality money trees in your closets, you needed to know a hippie who’d smuggled seeds from California (or, ideally, from the Amsterdam Cannabis Cup), you had to be willing to read books on best practices and, most daunting, you had to risk burning your house down, because you needed to run metal halide lamps and high-pressure sodium lights, neither of which had at that point been engineered and adapted for mass-market, indoor use by everyday people.

Today, you can buy purpose-built, compact versions of those lighting units — safe, “plug-and-play” products with a built-in ballast and a small hood reflector designed specifically for your bulb. Back then, you had to order crude, industrial kits, typically with an external ballast that emitted an intimidating whir. The heat was stifling and even when you closed the closet doors (which you couldn’t do for long because of the heat), the light poured out of the windows like Regan’s room glowing down on Father Merrin. Imagine running Walmart parking lot lights in your closets.

Simplified, the setup is as follows. In one closet, you run harmless fluorescent bulbs over trays of clones (seedlings) cut from a mother plant which is kept in a constant vegetative state in a second closet lit by metal halides running 24 hours a day. When your clones are strong enough, you pot them and put them next to their mother in the second closet so they can grow and mature. Once they’re mature enough (a subjective judgment), you place them in a third closet under high-pressure sodium lamps, which run 12 hours on and 12 hours off to induce and maintain flowering.

If you had to be an amateur electrician to keep from starting a fire, you needed to be MacGyver himself to set up the high-pressure sodium lamps on a timer. Rather than try, it was easier to simply be home when the lights needed to be turned off (and, 12 hours later, back on) in the third closet. It wasn’t a precision exercise. An hour late or early didn’t matter, but you had to be a semblance of consistent because the flowers are the product. You need to get that part right.

And so it was that for more than two years my days, and those of my childhood best friend, who shared the townhouse, pivoted around 7:30 — AM to turn the high-pressure sodium lamps in closet number three off (at least then that set of lights wasn’t contributing to the day’s heat) and PM to turn them back on (the cooler nighttime temperatures helped offset the incremental increase in heat from the bulbs).

Our routine was the same every day. We’d get up at 6:30 or so and take the Acura to a nearby Starbucks for my coffee and paper and then to a Weigel’s for his. I only drank Starbucks and only read The New York Times. He only drank gas station coffee and only read local news.

Coffee and papers in hand, we’d come back to the townhouse to get caffeinated and informed. In the spring and summer, we’d sit outside at a folding card table next to the front door.

One morning, a car we’d never seen before pulled into the cul-de-sac: A candy red, 1970s-era Chevy Monte Carlo. It approached very slowly, stopping at intervals in front of each row of townhomes.

He looked up from his News Sentinel. “Who the fuck is this?” I put down the Times. “Dunno.” After what seemed like a very long time, the Monte Carlo reached the end of the cul-de-sac, close enough that we could make out the driver. He was older, but not by a lot, black and staring right at us. Or so we thought. He parked next to the Acura.

My friend, who doubled as my bodyguard, reached under a folded section of his paper for a Ruger P95, the only gun we had. I raised my right hand a few inches off the card table to stay him: “Hang on, hang on. I don’t think this guy’s actually looking at us.”

I pulled a Camel Turkish Gold from the pack on the card table, Zippo’d it, stood up and strode down the short concrete walkway towards the cars. The driver’s side door of the Monte Carlo swung open and out stepped a mid-twentysomething, every bit of 6’5” and 220lbs. He was wearing a durag, an oversized, bleach-white t-shirt, denim shorts, a blindingly new pair of Jordan 13s and what looked like a gold Rolex.

“How you doin!” he beamed, flashing a wide, endearing smile. I dragged the Camel and gestured at his outfit with my off hand. “Not as good as you, apparently,” I said on the exhale. He let out a booming belly laugh and introduced himself. As it turned out, he wasn’t looking at us. He was looking at the until-then-empty townhouse which abutted ours. It was for rent. And he was about to be our new neighbor.

I went about my day as usual. Save the closet business, my life was mundane back then. I went to class (I was a philosophy major originally) and dabbled in bartending, which didn’t really work out because of the 7:30 imperative. In the evenings, I’d pick up to-go spaghetti from a little Italian spot and a small bottle of cognac which I’d drink in the shower until the hot water ran out. Then I’d spend an hour or so taking care of the plants. Or just staring at them. “You know you’re a genius, right?” my friend used to say, as we pondered our little forests.

Besides my Vanguard Balanced Index Fund, the Acura and my cash crops, I had exactly five assets to my name if you didn’t count my futon mattress: A TV, a couch, a PlayStation 2 and two PlayStation 2 games, NBA Live and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Removed as it was from Third World poverty, it was equally removed from First World opulence. But from a happiness perspective, my relative dearth of assets and material possessions was more than offset by a complete lack of cares and worries.

The Iraq War, which was front-page news at the time, presaged a broader unraveling of the world I knew growing up, but that storm was very distant. Lehman Brothers was still a going concern, American society still looked more or less like it did in the mid-1990s, there were no smart phones and although Facebook technically existed, virtually nobody’d heard of it.

That evening, just after sunset, I heard the Monte Carlo pull back up. I peeked out the blinds of an upstairs window and watched a giant fumble boxes and nearly trip over the cord of a lamp he was trying to carry in — the beginnings of a bachelor’s move-in.

I went downstairs and poked my head into the living room, where my best friend-turned bodyguard was playing Live. “I’m gonna go talk to this guy.” “The Monte Carlo guy?” he asked, pausing the game. “Yeah.” “Be careful,” he said, almost scolding. “It’ll be fine.”

I walked outside and called out to our gregarious new neighbor: “Need some help?” “Awe maaan, that’d be great,” he said, with an earnestness that suggested I’d offered to donate him one of my kidneys instead of help him carry sundries. The car was packed with shoes. Boxes and boxes of them, floorboard to headliner. He couldn’t possibly have seen out the rear windshield, nor the passenger-side window on the drive there.

“Jesus Christ, how many pairs of shoes do you own?” I marveled, after hauling in a third stack of boxes and depositing them in a bedroom closet of a floor plan identical to mine. “This ain’t even half of ’em,” he said. “So how many?” I pressed. “Shit, let me think–” He plainly believed I wanted a precise answer. “51.” I raised my eyebrows. “No! Wait.” He corrected himself. “53 with these I got on and those over there,” he pointed to the unboxed pair he was wearing when we first met earlier that day.

I’d never heard of such a thing. I had three pairs of shoes at the time. One for running, one for doing nothing and one pair of white Air Force Ones I wore on special occasions and cleaned with a toothbrush to make them last.

We walked back down the stairs and then back outside. I lit a Camel and he retrieved one more item from the Monte Carlo, a large UHaul moving box. “Polos,” he explained, setting it down beside us. He lit a Black & Mild.

“So what do you do?” he wondered. “For work you mean?” He nodded. “Little of this, little of that. I was going to ask you the same question,” I said. “I, uh–” he trailed off. “It’s ok,” I told him. “But it seems like I might be in the wrong businesses,” I mused. “You might be!” he laughed.

We stood there for another minute or two. I leaned down, mushed the spent end of my Camel into the concrete and flicked the butt into the grass. “Well, I’m gonna go eat,” I said. “I got some leftover spaghetti in the fridge.” He pulled a roll of money out of his pocket and peeled off five twenties. “‘Appreciate the help,” he said, reaching the bills towards me. “Nah, I can’t take that. We’re neighbors now,” I said. “But I could use a new polo,” I joked, pointing at the box.

He took me completely serious. “I got you!” he bellowed, opening the box to reveal a veritable kaleidoscope of Lacoste, most of which appeared to still have tags. “I was totally kidding, man,” I told him, chuckling. “And I’m 150lbs wet. I can’t fit your size.” “Most of these is mediums, actually,” he said, without elaborating on why he’d have dozens of brand new polos that would’ve been uncomfortably snug if they fit him at all.

I fished around and pulled an electric green and a pastel pink from the middle of the heap. “I can have ’em?” I asked, just to be sure. “Hell yeah!” “Well, thanks.” “Anything you need –” he stopped short. He’d forgotten my name. I reminded him. “That’s right. But ima just call you ‘C,'” he said.

The other person’s disease

 

In the introductory section of their landmark 1992 article inaugurating the gold standard for measuring an individual’s level of materialism, Richins and Dawson noted that observers dating back to Alexis de Tocqueville saw in Americans an insatiable covetousness.

“It is odd,” de Tocqueville wrote, in 1835, “to watch with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue prosperity and how they are ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it.”

Truer words have scarcely been spoken. De Tocqueville’s assessment was echoed again and again over the centuries. Richins and Dawson quote Philip Cushman’s 1990 essay in American Psychologist, where the post-War American consumer was described as an “empty self” which “yearn[s] to acquire and consume.”

They also cite “The Culture of Consumption,” a collection of essays published in 1983 by Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears who, presaging Cushman, argued that advertisers sell consumers on the notion that an existential void can be filled by material goods, sending Americans on “a ceaseless pursuit of the ‘good life.'”

And on and on. Suffice to say Americans are historically afflicted, and on a lot of accounts it’s getting materially (no pun intended) worse, driven by social media.

A 2022 study published in Psychology & Marketing noted that the pandemic “led to an increase in the factors that typically facilitate the endorsement of materialistic values,” and although the authors were surprised to discover that at least on some measures, consumerism was attenuated in recent years, they observed an “upward trend in brands promoting spending as a way to attain well-being” in the post-COVID world, and recommended “interventions aimed at diminishing materialistic attitudes,” including efforts to curb social media use.

In 2023, Bankrate published a survey which suggested nearly two-thirds of GenZ and Millennials are prone to “impulsive” purchases based on social media.

As the figure shows, social media-driven impulse-buying is far less common among those 43 and up, but one thing all age cohorts share is a generalized sense of buyer’s remorse, with nearly six in 10 regretting such purchases.

The same survey found that a third of GenZ and Millennials impulsively spent $500 or more on a social media-inspired purchase over the preceding 12 months. Indeed, the average amount spent on such purchases among Millennials was more than $1,000.

In a testament to the deleterious trends and feedback loops discussed at length above, three in 10 Americans under 43 said they became depressed to a greater or lesser degree about their own financial situation after viewing the social media posts of others.

The data, charted above, suggests that phenomenon’s virtually non-existent for older Americans, and the same’s true of a related dynamic: The impact of social media on one’s personal finances.

Plainly, feelings of status inadequacy attributed to social media are driving younger Americans to make poor financial choices, which can in turn feed back into depression through buyer’s remorse.

All of this speaks to the much broader self-fulfilling prophecy that is America’s post-World War II societal crisis. That decades-long dissolution process, defined by declining trends in traditional forms of social capital, is a thematic mainstay of these Monthlies. When social capital went missing, Americans tried to fill the void with different manifestations of escapism and addiction.

As is so often the case with addiction, we recognize the problem but pretend it isn’t ours. Materialism, the cultural critic Juliet Schor quips, is always “the other person’s disease.”

42

 

Maybe that was supposed to be our table, maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

Upon walking through the double doors of the Ruth’s Chris by the Tennessee River in Knoxville, I’d announced the last name on the reservation (mine), then proceeded straight into the dining room, leaving the hostess trailing behind me.

“Bring me a coffee,” I instructed her, as I settled into a booth seat. “I’ll get your sever,” she offered, irritable that I’d usurped the only authority she had: Choosing who sits where. I knew the coffee responsibility wasn’t hers, but I didn’t acknowledge the attempt to shirk. I needed caffeine, and it wasn’t like I was asking for a craft cappuccino. “Coffee,” I repeated, flatly.

She looked at me. I looked at her. Staring contest. She blinked. “Do you want crea–” “Black’s fine.” She shuffled off. My peripheral saw her complain to a waitress. I could hear her, even though I couldn’t: “Well this guy’s an asshole. Enjoy.”

I unslung my Loewe Cubi and carefully placed it beside me in the booth, as if situating a small child. I was half an hour early to make up for being half an hour late to our last dinner. The server — not the hostess — brought my coffee, and after a few sips I felt better. They say too much coffee makes you agitated, but for coffee drinkers, too little coffee’s far worse in that regard.

I saw them come in, and watched him greet the same hostess with a warm smile and what, judging by her reaction, was some manner of tasteful flattery. He motioned his wife ahead, then the hostess, following only then, in stark contrast to my curt, imperious entrance.

As they got closer, I was struck by the feeling that he was an adult and I somehow wasn’t. That hadn’t occurred to me at our last dinner in the summer of 2024. He was wearing a tan blazer with a simple, baby blue t-shirt underneath, jeans that fit just right, dark brown loafers and wide-rimmed black glasses. He’d moved a long way on the maturity spectrum in the more than two decades since durags, XXL white tees and Jordans. I’d moved a long way on that same spectrum, only in the opposite direction apparently.

His whole outfit at Ruth’s Chris didn’t add up to a third of the Cubi, to say nothing of my Golden Goose jacket, Lanvin button down and Louboutin belt (all paired, naturally in my context but absurdly in any other, with some Air Forces I customized to match the Lanvin shirt using Nike’s “By You” feature), but money doesn’t buy taste. Indeed, too much money often reveals a lack of taste. And that evening, he looked like he walked out of a GQ photoshoot, whereas I looked like an eccentric overcompensating for something. Just then I realized the same must’ve been true 16 months previous at Fleming’s, and on God only knows how many other occasions since I became the richer “brother.”

I stood up to receive the over-complicated handshake with the pull-in back slap at the end. Then turned to his second wife for what will always be a one-armed half-hug, never a two-armed, full embrace. It’s nothing personal. She’s an intelligent, college-educated woman with a CPA and an accounting job at a charity. Whitney, his first wife, was none of that, but she was like a sister to me. And her absence is another reminder that the past is the past, a proposition I generally refuse to accept despite it being self-evident.

The food was fine I suppose. Actually, it wasn’t. It was the single-most underwhelming Ruth’s Chris experience I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something: I’ve always been disappointed with Ruth’s Chris. It simply isn’t worth the price, which is considerable. The fact that I don’t remember what I ate at an expensive dinner that occurred just two months ago attests to the forgettability of the food, not to the age of the diners which, while getting on, isn’t so advanced as to render the specifics of a $500 meal mentally irretrievable a mere eight weeks hence.

We went out into the parking lot and it turned out they’d parked right next to me without realizing it. I’d forgotten that the last time we saw each other I had a different Mercedes. “This is you, C?” “Oh. Yeah. I got another one,” I said, a little glum, still reeling from the fresh realization that my personal style choices are probably best described as kitsch, not impressive, nor refined.

“So you hooked on the Benzes now!” he laughed. “I guess.” I opened the passenger door and started it up so he could hear the exhaust noise, which the car lets you adjust from the AMG settings menu, where you can toggle from loud to extra loud — you know, for those times you want people to know this is no regular Mercedes.

“Look at them seats!” he effused, sliding into the red-paneled leather. “That screen!” his wife declared, reaching in to brush the side of the oversized multimedia display, which flows seamlessly into a carbon fiber center console.

“I got a Christmas present for you,” I told him, reaching into the backseat for a grey Balenciaga package. This was a considerably more expensive gift than the Ferragamo wallet I bought for his birthday in 2024, the difference being the hoodie in the grey package wasn’t actually purchased as a gift. I bought it for myself in yet another futile attempt to find a Balenciaga item that doesn’t look clownish on a middle-aged man with narrow shoulders and a slim frame.

The hoodie, despite being an XS, was so obviously not going to fit that I didn’t bother trying it on, let alone removing the tags, when it arrived in the mail. At least, in giving it to him, the $1,150 outlay wouldn’t be a total waste.

He pulled the hoodie out of the package. All the paperwork fell out into the floorboard. “Keep all of that,” I told him. “If you ever want to resell it, you’ll need those documents to get top dollar.” He held the hoodie up in front of him in the passenger seat. “It’s Balenciaga,” I emphasized, as if the package didn’t say as much, and as if the brand name weren’t emblazoned in faux spray paint on the front and back. “This crazy, C!” he said.

It was crazy. Crazy that someone with my educational background, and who at that very moment had in the glovebox a 64-year-old, stained and weathered copy of Wittgenstein’s 1914-1916 Notebooks, had somehow succumbed so completely to consumerism as to be possessed of superfluous Balenciaga items, bought knowing full well that on a hypothetical 1-10 scale for luxury brands where 1’s understated refinement indicative of unassuming elegance and 10’s the height of tasteless inanity, Balenciaga is Nigel Tufnel.

“Try it on,” I told him. He got out, took off his blazer and put on the hoodie. I walked around the car and sized him up. It fit perfectly, and despite itself, looked a semblance of urbane when donned by someone who wasn’t trying too hard. “I love it,” he exclaimed. “Thanks, C!” “Consider it repayment for the polos.” He looked quizzical. I briefly recapped the day we first met all those years ago. He pretended to remember. But plainly didn’t.

I went back to my room at the Cleo on Gay Street feeling like I’d failed as an adult despite succeeding financially. Then I remembered Solon’s stages, according to which we aren’t truly adults until 42. That made me feel better about my lingering emotional immaturity. On Solon’s reckoning, I’d only been a grownup for three months.

---