Leaves in a Swimming Pool

A man stands at the edge of his swimming pool, holding a leaf skimmer. The pool was installed in 2006 when a great, expansive second floor was added to the house, increasing its value significantly. But time and the elements have taken its toll on the pool deck—the stone is marred with dirt and grime and the outdoor furniture is faded.

The man swings the leaf skimmer back and forth in the pool, trying to scoop up every last leaf, deposited there from the oak that hung over the north end of the pool, mocking him. If it weren’t an oak, he would have had that tree removed long ago. “Damn all these leaves in this damn swimming pool,” he says, cursing his misfortune, thinking about all the bullshit he has to deal with on a daily basis.

At this point his wife approaches from behind and says, “Darling…you have a swimming pool.”

I looked it up. 8% of houses in the U.S. have a swimming pool, and that includes the cheap, lowbrow above-ground types. You have a swimming pool, you are already in the top 8%. What in the actual fuck do you have to complain about? If you are in the top 8% of households in the U.S., that probably means that you are in the top 0.3% of households in the world. And you’re complaining about leaves in a swimming pool. Earth to asshole: you have a swimming pool.

We have it so good. We have such an unbelievably high standard of living, with every technological convenience at our disposal. We have dishwashers and washing machines and we even have these little robots that you talk to and they turn on the music. And some giant faceless corporation spent $10 billion on that gadget, losing boatloads of money on it in the hopes that you would buy their stuff. Life is awesome. Life is amazingly awesome. And this country is so rich, that people in the bottom half, or even the bottom quarter, have it pretty good. There is literally nothing to complain about.

Years ago, I used to run around with a—for lack of a better word, poorer crowd of people in Myrtle Beach. What I found by hanging out with them was that I had the most extravagant luxury problems in the world. One time I was with these people, and everyone was talking about their problems, stuff like, I can’t pay my rent, or, I might go back to jail, and I was like, “Ugh! My literary agent isn’t returning my emails!” And people looked at me like I was nuts. There is a saying: if you’re with a group of people and you all put your problems in the middle of the room in a big pile, chances, are, you would want your problems back. This is a pretty strong argument for not complaining about shit.

My brother and I are like Felix and Oscar. We have a lot of things in common, especially the scatological humor and dick jokes, but in some ways, we are diametrically opposed. My brother doesn’t complain about stuff—even when things are really going pear-shaped, he is always looking on the bright side and trying to spin it into a positive. This used to piss me off. And now I get it—your thoughts become your words, and your words become your actions, and if you are really a negative person, complaining about things all the time, you are going to manifest negativity in your life. If you wish for bad things to happen, bad things will happen. I have seen people do it over and over again.

To wit: I am writing this essay poolside at the Condado Vanderbilt in Puerto Rico. I am on a lounge chair overlooking the damn ocean. We were assigned to Room 262. We looked out the window—we were right over the hot tub, and unfortunately, the hot tub is open until midnight. There is noise. I’m not super-sensitive to noise, but my wife is. We discussed changing rooms. We talked to our travel agent, and we learned that the hotel tried to do right by us and upgrade us to a huge suite—it just happened to be a bad location. The last thing I want to do is put this on my travel agent who works very hard to make sure his clients are happy. It’s all good. Think of what a high-maintenance prick I would be if I threw a temper tantrum and demanded a room on a higher floor. Think of the optics of this for a second: rich guy is annoyed by voices coming from the hot tub outside his giant luxury suite. Life is pretty good—it doesn’t have to be perfect.

My least favorite place in the world, hands down, is the Hamptons. I went once, years ago, and I will never go back (unless I have a DJ gig). And the reason I hate the Hamptons is because it is full of super-rich jackasses who think everything has to be perfect. I went to a fish shop at one point, this little shop in East Hampton that sells fresh fish. I was waiting to pick up an order. Pencilneck old guy is unhappy about the extra 30 seconds it’s taking to be served, so he goes behind the counter, into the freezer, and starts yelling at the poor Mexican guy who works there. I saw people get into fuck you screaming matches over a parking space. It was nuts. This magical place, where everything is absolutely perfect, and people find reasons to be unhappy. In fact, they are pretty much unhappy all the time. I’ve seen the same phenomenon in Los Angeles as well. As you know, the weather in Los Angeles is perfect, every day. There are inconveniences, like the traffic, but Californians have worked hard on making California perfect, and it is pretty great. I was in a café on the ground floor of an office building (this was back in 2007 or so), and this gorgeous, impeccably dressed young woman was at the cash register, getting her lunch, and she says to the cashier, “Were you giving me attitude?” And then they got into a screaming match on a perfect day where everyone is wearing perfect clothes and smelled great and everyone has a phone number in their bank account. I was like, you people are nuts.

I think if you grow up with not a lot, you tend to have a different perspective on this. Let’s put it this way: I wasn’t going to luxury hotels overlooking the ocean when I was a kid. Last week, I was at the construction site of my new 10,000 square foot home, and I tripped over a piece of rebar. Punched a hole in my new, $700 black suede boots. An old friend of mine says you’re allowed to be upset about something for 24 hours. I was upset for about 20 minutes. Am I really going to be the guy that complains about ruining a pair of boots on the construction site of his multimillion-dollar home? I chunked them in the trash and ordered new ones, without giving it another thought.

I have another longtime friend who is unfailingly positive. He’s the guy that gave me DJ lessons back in 2008. Sometime around 2013, we were taking some classes at Dubspot on 14th Street in New York. Dubspot was a great electronic music/DJ school that went tits up about five years ago. I was taking an Ableton class with a bunch of 13-year-old Dubstep producers. Anyway, my friend and I leave Dubspot and take a cab back to his apartment. Back in his apartment, about 15 minutes later, he says, “Shit! I left my laptop at Dubspot.” And this point I’m freaking out—dude, dude, and he looks at me and says, very calmly, I think it’s going to be okay. I’m going nuts in the cab all the way there and his heart rate hasn’t gone up a beat. We get to Dubspot, he goes inside, and the laptop is right in class where he left it. Nothing to worry about. He says that a lot: I think it’s going to be okay. And the magic of that statement is it always is okay, and even if it’s not, it’s still okay. Bridge of Spies, with Tom Hanks, was a decent movie, but the best part about it was the Communist spy. He’d be about to be sentenced to death for espionage, or swapped to the Russians who would torture and kill him. Tom Hanks would ask him, aren’t you worried? And he'd turn around and say, deadpan, “Would it help?”

I think this to myself when I’m on a plane and the wi-fi isn’t working. Talk about first world problems. A real problem is if one of my cats dies. And if that doesn’t make any sense to you, change “cats” to “kids” and you will get the picture. Everything else is gravy. Go ahead. Say all the mean things you want to me on Twitter. At least I have Twitter.