Life never turns out as you expect anyway.
Sometimes it’s better to show up without a plan.
Wander around a little and see what you find—
No angles or attachments. Just being.
Old water towers—especially rooftop ones—have become such a tired, cliched symbol of urban life that I’m almost embarrassed to publish these images. Almost.
By now, most U.S. cities have been scrubbed clean of any real grit, thoroughly gutted by cookie-cutter development companies, though their marketing teams often push to keep a few post-industrial vestiges as a simulacrum of character and a unique selling point—they’re anything but unique, of course.
If there aren’t some old machine gears lying around to refashion into abstract sculpture, preserving a relic water tower is a great way to convince clueless college grads from the burbs that their overpriced loft with quartz countertops and stainless-steel appliances is the epicenter of the new Williamsburg.
In vacuous cities with no tangible identity (see also: Atlanta), a developer can easily build their latest stack of plywood boxes around an old water tower and be praised by sycophantic members of the local press for historic preservation and “placemaking.”
Hordes of clueless transplants snap pics of the preserved tower to feel some sort of connection to the city—no matter how tenuous—and to lazily flaunt their cosmopolitan lifestyles on social media.
Meanwhile, their friends and relatives back in Bumfuck just roll their eyes—like rusty old water towers don’t exist in every possum hollow.
But screw all that. I just like the way old water towers look against a vibrant sky. Deal with it.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a fern
OK, so that’s not how it goes, but I consider it an improvement.
There’s just something about ferns that speaks to me: their quiet grace and elegance, and their ability to thrive in the dark, hidden places where most plants could never survive.
I find the delicate fronds of the marginal wood fern particularly alluring, and it feels nice to run my fingers through them.
This evergreen fern grows in wooded areas along the Northeast Corridor, which is more forested than I initially thought.
Hey, I’m here for the small surprises.
How the hell did we end up in this intricate mess?
Is this the fate sealed for us?
Maybe one day, we’ll look back on this time and think,
“Wow, that was some crazy shit.”
If we’re lucky.
And if we’re wise—
We’ll make sure it never happens again.
Too bad we’re so fucking stupid.
I just got off the train and had to piss something awful.
We arrived at the station almost an hour early—which never happens—and the afternoon light was perfect for photography.
I knew a storm was forecast to roll in within an hour, and I wanted to get pics of a church several blocks away, but my window of opportunity was narrowing fast.
I booked it out of the station and started marching down the street to the south side of the business district. I still needed to pee.
As I walked past a nearby park, I thought of a restroom I saw there before. Okay, I thought, I’ll stop by.
I walked up to the restroom, and the door was wide open. Homeboy was standing beside it, leering at me as he gnawed on a straw.
I didn’t make eye contact but observed him in my periphery: Shirtless, pants sagging below his ass cheeks, about nine inches of underwear showing. I understood what was happening.
As I walked into the restroom, I noticed three small urinals on the wall—no dividers.
Downlow central, I thought.
Urinals never had partitions when I was a kid, but over the last few decades they’ve become a ubiquitous fixture of men’s rooms. I attribute that to the shrieking moral panic that Americans keep thrusting upon themselves like kinky masochists.
Overgrown baby men have become terrified of other guys seeing their pee-pees, and women are scared shitless that pedophiles will prey on their crotch droppings, so now we erect little dividers between urinals to protect our precious penises from prying eyes.
Curiously, many of those people didn’t think twice about electing a pedophile and sexual predator for president, but if nothing else, recent events have proven that most Americans are fucking idiots.
Anyone who studies history or has a lick of common sense can tell you that restriction and prohibition never work. Period.
It’s like Whack-a-Mole: tamp something down in one hole, and it pops up in another—harder and faster than ever. That’s the law of balance.
Homophobia has successfully siloed off men so that they never see each other in the flesh, but I’m convinced it’s also made a large chunk of guys abnormally curious about other men’s dicks and bodies, and what they do with them—to the point of obsession.
Men see cocks in porn, of course, but those hairless monstrosities aren’t representative of the average dude, and I would hope most men can understand that intellectually.
There are a lot of stupid bros, though.
The bigger problem is that without actual guys around to be naked and compare dicks with, men have been stripped of an essential rite of passage. We’re primates, after all, wired to learn about ourselves by observing and engaging with others.
As a result, I suspect many men feel inadequate and incomplete on a deep, primal level that’s impossible to articulate. And without a healthy way to address it, of course they get weird as shit.
It doesn’t help when guys’ cunt girlfriends and wives make disparaging comments about their penis size—that’s a frequent-enough complaint online that it seems to be a common tactic women use to emasculate men, which is abhorrent.
A man’s relationship with his penis is solemn and reverent, and for anyone to belittle his manhood is a violation of the sacred.
Because urinal dividers have become so common, online spaces now exist where men post pictures of restrooms with open urinals and share location details so other men can visit them.
That’s how desperate men are to see a real guy’s dick.
Predictably, restrooms that lack urinal dividers have also become prime cruising spots for downlow men.
In the old days, a guy could discreetly check out cocks in any public restroom, and it wasn’t a big deal. Now if you walk into a place with open urinals, it’s guaranteed you’re stumbling into a den of creeps.
I knew that when I stood in front of the center urinal that afternoon. I also wasn’t surprised when homeboy from the entrance quietly walked in and sidled up to my left.
I hadn’t pissed in hours, so I was blasting a load that felt like it was endless.
As I stared at the concrete wall, I watched in the corner of my eye as homeboy unzipped his pants and barely trickled into the adjoining urinal.
Uh huh, I thought. He doesn’t need to pee.
At a certain point, he began staring at my dick. I said nothing.
How do I feel about this? I remember thinking.
The piss kept coming, so what I felt didn’t matter.
It’s not like I can stop mid-stream.
His eyes were still fixed on my dick as he tugged his own like he was shaking the last drops of piss. Then he kept tugging.
Finally, he started rubbing his shaft in deep strokes, turning slightly toward me in case I didn’t know what he wanted.
I didn’t look at his dick, but could tell from the long motions of his hand that it was a lot bigger than my five-incher.
Good for him, I thought.
I considered the situation and realized I didn’t care all that much. I didn’t feel violated or exposed.
God knows I’ve got plenty of dick pics floating around, and I’m sure homeboy’s seen so many cocks that he forgot mine in five minutes. I certainly don’t remember much about the ones I’ve seen.
Most men don’t have the balls to admit it, but all dicks run together after a while—even the big ones. None of them are that unique.
I felt compassion toward the guy, though. He was hard up and hanging out at the park, waiting to get off with someone.
It just wasn’t gonna be me: I wasn’t attracted to him or interested in joining. I also really wanted to photograph that church—architecture has always interested me more than sex.
I quickly zipped up my pants and skipped past the sink. No need to prolong the awkwardness by washing my hands while he stroked.
As I walked toward the door, homeboy stepped in front of me, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder, cruisy style—nothing subtle about that move. I just brushed past him.
It’s a typical Southern city, so I’m sure he found plenty of downlow bros to play with that afternoon. I also got the pics I wanted.
He was a young guy.
Bet you I was twenty years older than him.
We were from different backgrounds, too.
I could tell.
For one thing, he had a mullet—seriously.
Thick Alabama accent.
Smelled of cheap cologne.
I liked him though.
He wore black clothes and carried a black backpack out of habit.
What he kept in there was unclear—I never saw him open it.
He sported black socks and sneakers, too, even when he was wearing shorts.
That was a choice.
I watched him almost daily for over a year.
Never knew his name—doesn’t really matter.
Our paths crossed a few times.
I believe we conversed twice.
He smiled gently and nodded once.
Something about him felt so familiar.
We were of the same tribe—I know it.
I’ve crossed paths with my kin before.
They’re usually quiet, cautious, and reserved—at least at first.
Typically nerdy, mildly handsome, unremarkable to most.
The outer layer doesn’t matter—they inevitably stand out to me.
I always detect in them a silent grace, a sense of honor, and, above all, a desire to serve.
That’s when I know I’ve found another one.
I’m pretty sure he and I had a moment when our eyes locked, knowingly.
His head cocked out of curiosity, almost imperceptibly.
He probably didn’t understand the pattern yet.
He will.
Every time I saw him, I prayed for grace over him.
I didn’t know his mission, but I guarantee he has one.
For years, I wanted to befriend the kin I found.
I gave that up a long time ago.
We’re just so fucking elusive.
Even to each other.
So aloof, independent, and all on solitary assignments.
I’ve come to accept that as the design.
When I discover another one, though, I hold them in my heart.
Even after they leave.
A prayer for them is a prayer for myself.
And of course, he’s gone now.
One day he just disappeared.
May grace accompany us on our separate journeys.