Esquire September 2022

“You learn to own up to your MADNESS and be a man. And I had a lot of madness INSIDE ME. I was trying to keep that shit deep down and TUCKED because I had to be the guy that was the SAVIOR to millions.” KID CUDI IS STANDING IN FRONT OF A JUMBO SCREEN AT THE HOME of the New York Mets, watching a stadiumful of fanatics chant his name. He hasn’t toured in five years, and he forgot how much he needed this feeling. Not just the idolatry but the physical connection with fans that’s kept him alive all these years. Night after night this summer, he’ll feel it again when he embarks on a twenty-seven-city world tour, an ambitious, theatrical exhibition combining his love of singing and acting…

WE WERE SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN ITALY, BETWEEN TRIVERO and Milan, when the speedometer on the Mercedes hit 235 kilometers per hour. The three American passengers tried to play it cool, as if we’d gone this fast before. From the back seat, I Googled the conversion: 146 miles per hour. Our driver, Vincenzo, looked at ease while staring at the dark, empty highway ahead. As the car sped faster, our we’ve-done-this-a-hundred-times facade began to crack. Esquire style director Jonathan Evans, riding shotgun, started twisting his beard between two fingers—an obvious tell. I peeked at the dashboard. 240 kph. 243 kph. The car bore no signs of our speed; it neither shook nor droned. The only sound was that of Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” on Vincenzo’s preferred ’90s station. I didn’t like…

I HAD TO RUN IT BACK, BECAUSE I WAS certain I hadn’t heard what I’d heard. It was a weekday after another weekend of mass shootings, which itself had followed a week that contained a mass shooting in an elementary school. It was a time for deep reflection and decisive action, unless you’re an American lawmaker: South Dakota senator John Thune was asked the sensible and relevant question “Why do people even need AR-15’s?” “They are a sporting rifle,” he said with a sigh, unable to make eye contact with his interviewer. He continued. “And in my state they use them to shoot prairie dog and, you know, other types of varmints.” And that was that. Don’t bother wondering why a prairie dog needs to be vaporized, or why that means your…

IT FELT LIKE CHEATING, BUT IT WAS delicious. The early days of my relationship with the dirty martini were complex. I craved the easy sophistication that a martini conjured, but my postcollege self wasn’t ready for its stone-cold booziness. Few in their early twenties have dealt with enough adult life to appreciate the martini’s ability to make you forget that you now have to deal with adult life. A dirty martini, however? That wisp of olive brine alongside gin and vermouth made the drink downright quaffable and fun, even though it still looked like the thing that grown-ups who had a mortgage and a dinner jacket drank. It became a go-to when I felt the need to flex some faux refinement. But hang around too many serious bar folk and you hear the…

OUR MODERN LIVES ARE GOVERNED BY THE Algorithm. Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify push us to the products and entertainment we already like. This creates more data and profits for them and more of the same for us. Serendipity is dying fast. When, for instance, was the last time you were knocked on your ass by a music recommendation? I bet it’s been a while. The solution isn’t to become a Luddite—I’m not suggesting you abandon the platforms—but to reintroduce yourself to an old friend: the radio. Yeah, I know, the radio sucks. Scuzzy audio quality, corny disc jockeys, lame Top 40. The trick is to avoid (most of) the corporate-owned stations and seek out the college and public-radio outlets on the low end of the dial. There’s magic there. Music that…

AS I SAT IN THE DIVE BAR OUTSIDE MUSCLE SHOALS, Alabama, drinking a Bud Light while some man named Rooster played with his gun by the jukebox, I wondered whether this was really what novelists did. The one-armed man beside me had finished his pack of cigarettes and was eyeing me as if I, too, might be flammable. It was 7:00 P.M. on a Wednesday. I cleared my throat and asked, “Can I put something on the jukebox?” The whole room froze around me. I don’t know where novels come from, but I know where they happen: in places of bafflement and unease. In preparing for my latest, Less Is Lost, I asked myself: What baffles me? What am I afraid of? The answer came, spelled out as if in alphabet…