networking
an ex's birthday party
After I returned from Shanghai, one of the first things I did was drive from Jersey into Brooklyn to go to my ex C’s birthday party. I had felt isolated in Shanghai, alternately smothered and liberated by Chinese culture (more on this, some other time), and was in the mood for an American re-adjustment. Out of the fire, back into the frying pan. C’s social circle represented “America” to the extent that I couldn’t imagine finding a mix of burners, psychonauts, anarchists, neo-hippies, performance artists (these identities represent my best effort) anywhere else, specifically in NYC or the Bay. Although, if that’s the specific cultural adjustment I sought out—cosmopolitan, liberal Western values cosplaying in this circus of subcultural performance—maybe my real goal was to convince myself I had actually left.
I. 2015
I met C in 2015 and we dated for a year. I was just out of a relationship in which I sensed I had lost myself, and didn’t want a relationship. But I didn’t turn down dates, and C put together so many elaborate and bizarro adventures filled with novelty (psychedelics, access to exclusive underground-y spaces, distinguished people) that eventually, out of a sense of investment and obligation, I agreed we were in a relationship. C gave off the impression of a worldly and cultured intellectual traveler, and I hadn’t seen anything like it before—with friends in eclectically high places, and a set of disarmingly countercultural orientations: socialist, poly, anarchist, analytically philosophical, cyberpunk, Marxist. But I resented being in a relationship with him, which meant being exposed to his fretful and controlling insecurity, obsession with impressions and appearances, fits of bad temper and impatience and jealousy, and roving and disturbingly racialized sexual appetite. I tried to shut my eyes to what I couldn’t tolerate, to what was turning into a relationship of pure consumption and distraction—and only open my eyes when there was something novel to see. It was exactly the type of relationship I should have avoided at all costs.
Once, I was in a car with C and some of C’s friends, and one person referred to another individual, M, as “the smartest person he knew.” C fell quiet; some mixture of wounded pride, competitiveness, and acquisitive curiosity seemed to take over. C wanted to meet M.
I happened to know M and suggested that we all hang out together. A few weeks later, C arranged a meeting with M, but asked that I arrive later, to my irritation. He wanted to be able to meet M on his own first. When I showed up at the bar at the time he asked, it seemed that they hadn’t quite hit it off, and yet it didn’t seem like the point. My arrival changed the atmosphere, because now the space would accommodate my agenda, which was, always, to try to hit it off. As usual, C was overbooked and had to run, but he seemed now reluctant to leave.
After C was gone, I tried to probe M for his take on C, by trying to understand what he made of the kind of meeting that they had just had. Would they be friends? Probably not. Then would they simply “know of” each other? What point did that serve, if they didn’t feel a desire to be friends? M answered that perhaps it was something that men did, and were more comfortable with—they know that there is a specific use that they might have for one another, and they are able to maintain such connections in full awareness of its utilitarian nature.
That was news to me. In my mind, social connection served one purpose: to make friends. And by friends, I mean people on this hostile earth that you have chosen to be partisan towards. Choice isn’t the best word. Having been brought together by some social/circumstantial machinery, and having bonded through either ritualistic or random experience, you simply fall into a kind of tautology of friendship—I am friends with you because you are my friend. In 2015, I was only beginning to complicate that idea with the notion that you can choose one’s tribe. I was venturing into the stage of life—coinciding with an era in American politics—where alliances were built on shared interests and convictions; where your friends were not just friends of convenience and circumstance, but friends who extended from shared cultural and political awareness and vice versa.
What were M and C doing differently? It was different, somehow. They weren’t looking for warmth or allegiance. They sized people up. They measured themselves against their friends. They mutually challenged each other. Whatever it was, it looked both ugly and gendered to me, but then again, my approach looked ugly and gendered to me too. I understood theirs in this way: they, as men, lived lives in which they played games of power and influence—hopefully for good reason. In these games, the players can engage in rational exchange with other players, in service of a common goal. Players are more or less enlightened market actors, aware of where their selves end and their resources begin, and they are capable of rationally engaging with one another’s resources. Because they are playing games of power and influence, and not tribe- or identity-building, it was possible to transact with someone with whom they cannot identify, and for whom they need not feel affection, as long as it’s beneficial to transact. It is even possible to transact with someone who you don’t like. They are “networked.”
I knew about networking1 from college, but the only goal I could conceive of networking towards was employment. This was not C’s goal. C’s network was an expanding collection of interesting persons, which seemed to have the effect of making him more interesting and valuable to people as an operator of that network (a “network effect”). If he ever needed a job, he could ask his collection, and if he needed emotional support, maybe he’d search within his collection, but the main purpose was really just that network effect—and the quality that the collection lent his life. It demanded the same things that all collections demand—time spent curating and maintaining. But this was the second confounding thing about C’s life—how the effort of spinning all of these plates managed to look very hedonistic and fun and glamorous, to involve lots of travel and parties and gatherings, even if something seemed to eat at him from within.
All of our goals seemed elusive at the time—M’s seemed to be to read as much as possible, and to meet people interested in public policy, and to engage in intellectual debate. (Eventually he’d become a policy adviser and respected voice in electoral politics.) C’s goals seemed to be finding people to collaborate on interesting projects with. My goal was the most elusive, perhaps because I didn’t know how to formulate one—but judging by this story, it seemed to be to study the methods and the movements of men.
Subconsciously, I must have thought it would be possible to become one of these men. Already I was observing that I lagged far behind as a knower-of-people. I met people slowly and never pursued. I tended to attach emotionally or not at all. I also attached emotionally to my labor union, to the socialist movement, to identity-based justice movements, to artistic identities and communities. I avoided conflict. My friendships were not filled with debate and challenge.
Anyway, enough backstory.
II. 2025
C’s birthday party (2025) was held in a kind of permanent “immersive” art installation in the basement of a Bushwick church. It was thrown by B, C’s friend of ten years, a tall and abrasive anarchist and philosopher in his late 30s. B had the ability to hold court, and at the after-party I found him surrounded by a gaggle of 20-somethings listening with rapt attention. B led them into discussions like he was leading a college seminar—for a good twenty minutes the 20-somethings debated whether a work of art from a problematic creator had some intrinsic value that deserved consideration outside of the context of that creator (think Woody Allen, Neil Gaiman), a topic B that seemed to come from nowhere.
B moderated, chiming in and crowning certain answers while challenging others, but dedicating some portion of his attention to persons of note, who he would occasionally provoke. One man who sat in our circle seemed to be about B’s age or older, and at one point, B turned to him and said, “Now you’re someone whose thoughts I would really like to hear, because you work in this field, and as I understand it, are a respected authority…”
B explicitly stated his impression of the man’s status and credentials, but left concrete details vague (I never found out the man’s name, or where he published, or what his expertise really was). But behind the praise was something underhanded, almost malevolent—like someone pushing an off-duty fighter into the ring with a barrage of compliments—“and here we have our prize fighter, who will surely rise to the occasion.” And the man, who seemed used to being asked to extemporize, did all right.
B wasn’t done. Later in the conversation, B changed the subject completely. Acknowledging his dominance of the conversation, he said, “I think what would be best is if I stopped talking, and in fact”—turning to that same man—“I would like to get something out of you, if I may.” As if in gratitude to B’s service, the group quieted and turned their attention to the impending showdown between these two men.
B began to describe a film festival that the two had attended together. One evening, after one of the films, the two of them found themselves at an afterparty, where festival attendees mixed with programmers and press (presumably the man was press) and whoever else goes to these things. “Now I’ve historically prided myself on being able to go into social situations of any sort, of any group, even where I’m unknown and they’re unknown to me, and within a few moments, attain a successful social position,” B said. “This was the first time I couldn’t manage it at all.
“But you, on the other hand, I saw talking to two women. And you were doing exceptionally well. And I would have judged, before that day, that I was overall more skilled than you at asserting in an arbitrary social group, and after that day I had to really reconsider. So what I’d like to get from you, if I may, is an answer to what happened? What was going on that day?”
Even my attention was rapt. So this was gift of holding court—you could pose any topic, no matter how irrelevant to a listener’s experience, in such a way that the listener would want to follow you further down the hole, betting that something would be revealed. I was sure the same question would have flopped if the speaker were even the least bit insecure, but B was nothing if not self-assured, and the setup was so aggressive and baiting that I felt a little exhilarated.
Having asked question in a way that convinced everyone that he expected a very fine answer, you could see the man working to produce an answer that matched B’s bravado, while also countering the attack, and while also assessing the nature of the offensive.
We all spent a few minutes orienting ourselves to the question. The man tried to recall the facts of the evening. What had he actually been talking about? He thinks he had asked the women about a documentary, and they struck up a conversation because they all knew about it. I probed B, “Was this really the first time this has happened to you?” which seemed to slightly weaken B’s confidence (but maybe I imagined it). I did eventually lose interest in the conversation, when I saw it for what it was (dick-measuring), and went off to sit in a different conversation circle. “Are you sure you weren’t just under-estimating me?” the man was finally saying. Anti-climax. Maybe I got riled up by dick-measuring contests because I rarely witnessed them.
One person of interest to both me and B was a short, young, androgynously dressed Japanese woman wearing a backpack over a boxy button-up shirt and baggy knee-length shorts. B had at one point directed his spotlight on her, asking, “And so what’s your deal? From what C tells me, you live a life where your friends pay for your housing and expenses and travel, and you don’t have to have a job, and you just write.” I came to learn her name was R, and she spoke slowly, shyly, but deliberately—diffusing B’s aggression and hyperbole with underreaction and frankness.
“Actually, my friends do not usually pay for my housing and travel. I live with my parents in Japan. I guess I steal their food. This trip might be the first time someone is paying for me.” It was understood that C was footing the bill for her trip to New York.
I hadn’t kept up with C’s life in the last ten years, but I knew enough about him to know that if there was an East Asian woman in his orbit, I would (1) probably feel disturbed by the nature of their relationship, and (2) probably want to be friends with this woman. C was a white guy with a consistent and curated Asian fetish (many such cases). I was used to meeting Asian women in his orbit and finding out he was sleeping with them, and wondering if they’d felt the way I did—reluctant, fascinated, alienated, a little disgusted with myself for accepting the social bargain of getting into places as some guy’s lover. But the women were also interesting and likeable in their own right. This was the reality of the dating marketplace—as a participant, you can meet some solid friendship candidates through the men who are attracted to you. Just like college and employment and niche subcultures, romance is just another social institution whose selection effects help you build up the friendships that outlast any single romantic relationship.
I sat down next to R and we started talking. You could feel that the attention we were giving one another was different from the attention that passed between the philosopher-kings—and that in some sense, this was the kind of attention that the philosopher-kings couldn’t function without—at least not for long. That now, we were finally re-entering that social arena where it might be possible to have a nice time. To like one another. Before long, B was sitting with us, listening intently, attempting to figure out what it was we wanted to know from one another.
R and I wanted to understand one another’s ideas. We also wanted to know where those ideas came from—how those ideas took root in our lives, what irregularity in our consciousness it first hooked on. B, playing the seminar leader again, asked each of us to go around and name something we really objected to. I missed R’s answer, but I heard: “language is constitutive” and “this is what I believe is the most important problem for politics to address.” I asked her to say it again. R said that when two people speak to one another in language, even if it’s the same national Language, they are speaking out of a private understanding of that Language—so in some sense, they are speaking different private languages. She was talking, I think, about alienation along multiple dimension—there’s the alienation between people, who cannot use language to bridge their connection—and alienation from language, or at least the idea of language, which purports to facilitate communication but, in one’s own experience, just as likely frustrates it. And that the role of politics was to deal with this—perhaps to make it possible for us to live together in the face of this fact. B turned to me—I couldn’t avoid answering. I said something to the effect of how I didn’t like how sometimes people would write off entire chunks of human effort (like an entire field of study), in almost a tribal way. In some sense I was talking about reification—when language solidifies fluid human activities into rigid categories (e.g., "STEM" vs. "humanities") that people then form tribes around—and the discursive enclosure of academia. But I was also thinking about the few times I grew very angry at my friends of the elite coastal culturati for taking sweeping positions against enormous categories of technology (“crypto” and “AI”), whose evil they personified in an imaginary Zuck/Musk/Bezos/crypto-bro-in-mother’s-basement Frankenstein, and yet were friends with me, a real life technology worker who thought crypto and AI were groundbreaking and who has lived in my mother’s basement, whose humanity they allow because I shared their appreciation for literature and culture. It was no different from a supporter of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda personified the evils of immigration in imaginary drug dealer / rapist / welfare queen Frankensteins, but who had no problem with their immigrant wife or undocumented housecleaner. I was particularly incensed because of how expensive the lives and educations of these culturati were, for them not to see what seemed to me so obvious—and also for the social capital that they accrued from signaling their progressive-to-radical political positions—positions that seemed premised on treating almost everyone as not-human-until-proven.
I felt that R and I were saying the same thing.
I gave B and R a ride to their respective homes. As we dropped B off, he gave us fist bumps, but R said, “I want a metal hug!” A metal hug was when one person lifted their index finger and pinky, and another person lifted their third and fourth fingers, and you brought your hands together and the fingers fitted together. I could not find this recipe on the internet, so I assumed it was something B had made up, and R had heard about. R and B metal-hugged, and then B and I metal-hugged.
As I was dropping R off, I asked how she had met C. “On Tinder, although we’re just friends,” she said.
“Did he try to date you?”
“No. I’m gay actually.” R explained that C had met her when she was going through a tough time and had pretty much saved her life. “I think he sees me as a little sister. I think he wants to know what I’ll accomplish in the future. I think he wants to see what kind of influence he’s had.” I remembered how the last time I had lunch with C, and had made some remark that over-estimated his confidence and ease with an area of life I found difficult. He’d snapped at me, “After all these years you still fail to understand me.” Now I could see what drew C—and me—to R.
R asked me what I was reading. It was Anna Karenina, and a worn copy—the one I’d bought in Shanghai—was wedged in the cup dispenser. I told her about how Tolstoy, through the character of Levin, seemed to be of the opinion that a lot of human thought and agency was wasted on social performance, a lot of intellectual ideas hoarded by idle minds who simply want to have them as social currency. Levin, the nobleman farmer-landowner, was his shining example of a man whose intelligence and ideas were always applied to work. “I want that,” I said. “But I don’t understand my assignment.”
“I do,” R said.
“What’s your assignment?”
“For my generation, it’s to cure loneliness.”
And then we were pretty much at the place where she was staying—C’s brother’s apartment in Boerum Hill. That was one thing I missed about traveling with C and which I could never understand—to be constantly surrounded by people, and to be always an email away from having a place to stay.
We exchanged contact information and then R went into the building and we didn’t contact each other. To avoid tolls on the Tappan Zee, I drove home the long way—all the way up the East side of Manhattan, and then back down the West side, and then across the tunnels back into Jersey.
In college, “networking” was when you went to a mixer that is paid for by some company, where employees from the company would be stationed around the cheese table. Your task was to force conversation between yourself and the employee, avoiding any mention of your true goal, which was to get them to recommend you for a job interview. You would eventually obtain their business card, and send them an email to the effect of, “I was the person who talked to you about baseball. Can you refer me for an interview?” I’d considered myself socially enlightened when I discovered the existence of students who could “network” naturally and personably, by treating it less like an oral test and being “chill and with it” (but still in a well-calibrated, well-performed way)—and that this social savviness might be the bedrock of American upward mobility. And further that there existed some higher echelon of student who don’t go to the mixer at all because they don’t need to network with waged employees.