n 10 years as a couple, I had only agreed to my wife’s suggestions to have a baby vaguely, in the way I might to see a friend’s band: soon, yes, for sure. Over dinner at home one evening, she brought it up once again. “Am I ready?” I asked. “I don’t understand children. I’ve hardly met any.”
Charlotte reminded me that I had a niece and nephew. I liked Albert (10) and Vivienne (12), but I had my life in London and they had theirs in... Tring? I wasn’t sure. We were more like friends of friends, I said, overlapping at functions but yet to cross the line into a one-on-one drink. Charlotte said I should remedy this, as I would need to understand children very soon.
I texted my sister to arrange a rare get-together with her and the kids. They wanted to meet at Madame Tussauds. I arrived early, so I could circle its green dome in the hope this enduring site of parenthood might unlock a general truth or two about children. The original Madame Tussaud’s (with the apostrophe) was founded by the French artist Marie Tussaud in London in 1835. Her first wax sculpture was of Voltaire; the latest is of Timothée Chalamet, an index perhaps of the decline of Western civilisation. In the following 190 years, Madame Tussauds may have lost an apostrophe and been sold a couple of times—first to Dubai International Capital, then to the Blackstone Group, which merged it with Merlin Entertainments (with Dubai International retaining a 20 per cent stake in the combined company)—but its family values remain firmly intact.
Dozens of families were lining up outside, a surprise given I had read that children now browsed TikTok to the exclusion of virtually all other activities. Yet, there they stood, beneath an advert for a waxwork of Harry Styles. One boy, aged five-ish, was screaming with excitement, taking only micro-breaks for breath: “ahhhhhhh"—inhale—“ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.” At this stage, he hadn’t seen anything. I wondered: had the erosion of their offline world amplified the impact of anything “real” to the extent that even a mundane activity such as queuing was now a visceral thrill? Were they this easy to please?
The only fatherly quality I had developed prior to arriving was my monk-like devotion to value. Here, there were several opportunities to demonstrate it, beginning in the queue. Even with two free press tickets, I’d resented spending £74 on two more for the kids, who—when I told them the cost—appeared not to understand. I searched for ways to make the figure less abstract, so they’d appreciate the sacrifice I had made—the equivalent of my last dinner and drinks at Le Beaujolais, two seats at a Pavement reunion show—but soon recognised the lack of overlap in our respective frames of reference.
Inside, the frenzy with which every child greeted Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson painfully underlined this. A red-carpeted corridor led us to what Madame Tussauds calls the Awards Party zone. A voiceover made a series of heavy-handed diversity proclamations. Ignoring these, Vivienne thrust her handbag and iPhone at me and said to photograph her next to Dwayne.
After that, she and Albert ran between the statues for half an hour, treating every moment as a fleeting photo opportunity we needed to seize now or never, when each one was a static statue. As I watched Vivienne photographing Dwayne from new angles, I saw that already I understood children better. They hadn’t left TikTok—the statues represented a physical TikTok, one in which they could not only see Dwayne Johnson, but they could feel Dwayne Johnson.
Nicole Kidman was a nobody. Barack Obama was a nobody. The Beatles were nobodies but will.i.am wasn’t. The Culture Capital zone, which promised a “face to face with the game changers, trailblazers and intellectuals who have helped shape modern British culture”, featured Meghan Markle and Emmeline Pankhurst. But for the children, these were more nobodies. A staggering percentage of their photos—they shot all the nobodies—were just blurs of colour and light. But afterwards, I looked down at these photos, which had apparently been so important to take in the moment, and saw in their impressionistic swirls not a total waste of time but a document of raw life—life through the eyes of a child.
I grew inspired by the children’s desire to gorge on life. The Impossible Festival zone soon followed, resurrecting victims of drug overdoses, deadly diseases and assassinations as the line-up of a corporate rock festival, where inert simulations of Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Mercury and John Lennon grin forever.
As poor as the waxworks often were, while twirling around to search for the disappearing children in the chaos of other disappearing children and panicked parents, I regularly mistook them for real people, possibly because the real people adopted stances identical to those of the statues when posing for photographs. There was probably a comment on the modern day in this, but the phenomenon interested me more in how perfectly it captured the children’s perception of adulthood. It was clear how scantly Vivienne and Albert distinguished between the statues and myself. They liked Madame Tussauds because of their fascination with adults; they saw the plane of existence that the statues live on as a window into my own—into adulthood in general, which to children is more or less a lot of men standing around, trying to hold a smile.
Next, the Chamber of Horrors zone, confined mostly to narrow halls with low red lighting, presented statues of British serial killers. John Haigh, who dissolved his victims in sulphuric acid, stood behind a bathtub in a gas mask, by a trail of blood on the floor. It was the first time since Nicole Kidman that I’d been mildly interested in a statue. Albert, though, was visibly terrified. My sister explained we’d need to leave, instructing me to hold onto Vivienne’s hand while she took Albert’s. I had never held a child’s hand before and approached it with the stiffness, aptly, of one of the statues. We fled the zone, merging each sterile tableau into one rapid-cut visual assault of prisons, blood and dry ice, ironically making it more frightening than it ever would have been taken at a stroll.
Nicole Kidman was a nobody. Barack Obama was a nobody. The Beatles were nobodies but will.i.am wasn’t
I was grateful for this new insight into the psychological limits of children, whose fascination with adulthood apparently stopped at its realer perils, those not quite captured by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. That excitement and the initial intensity of the opening zones was enough to carry me through the Kong and James Bond activations, but by the soulless Marvel one, I was beginning to weaken. After that came Star Wars, and with it images of the next 10 years surrendered to an endless treadmill of Batman activations and Harry Potter activations and Stranger Things activations. I went my entire childhood without ever experiencing one brand activation. I hoped, as I watched other adults ably navigating each, that I, like they, might learn to care.
Despite the hours of gleeful shrieking and unending photography, the prevailing mood at Franco Manca during our debrief was one of dissatisfaction and muted critique. It turned out the children hadn’t cared either. “I didn’t really know any of the statues,” Vivienne said. “I don’t understand,” I replied. “Why were you taking so many photos?”
She laughed this question away. I asked them who should have been included. “Bill Gates,” Albert said. “Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.” He carried on like that, listing billionaires between bites of his pizza. “Logan Paul.” (He believed Logan Paul was also a billionaire.) After Albert finished his list by asking me, “Who’s Hillary Clinton?” it was revealed he’d been reading from different lists on his iPhone, supplied by Google searches for “rich people” and “famous people”.
The only knowledge of children I would leave with was that it was impossible to know anything about them, a paradox that in itself might also be incorrect. We ended by discussing whether they wanted to use pseudonyms or their real names for this article, with Albert flirting between Albert, the fun and casual Albie or the cool AJ; Vivienne flirted between Vivienne, Vivi and the name of a Stranger Things character.
Originally published on Esquire UK
J was the coolest grown-up at my first job. The place was a magazine publisher that felt like finishing school, lousy with women you could just tell had once owned a horse. If I was an outlier—not white, not born rich, gay sissy not gay gym bunny—so, too, was J, with her blunt haircut, her thrift-store shirts revealing tattooed arms.
I was stunned to learn that J was older than me, as though it had not occurred to me that one could be an adult but remain cool. J had a husband, an artist with a nerdy affect. His skin was covered with tattoos, many he’d doodled on himself. He’d tattoo me, if I wanted? I was a kid, trying to settle on what kind of person I’d be. Maybe here was part of the answer. Also, I thought him almost unbearably sexy. I wanted to be just like him, and just like her. Weeks later, I stood in the kitchen of their apartment while he sketched out what I’d requested—a skull and crossbones, for reasons forgotten, if I ever had any at all. “It’s perfect because someday all you’ll be is a skull and bones,” he said as he ran the needle across my shoulder blade. “This tattoo will last until then.”
I was 22, maybe too old to have so little sense of self, to be so enchanted by the idea that I was now a guy with a tattoo, and maybe too young to know that permanence is only an illusion. When I heard, a couple of years ago, that the handsome artist who did my first tattoo had died, I remembered that moment, the dumb tattoo I’d chosen being interpreted as a cheerful acknowledgment of my death, the one thing in life we know is going to happen to us.
The gag in our family is that this is my crisis, the word we most associate with midlife, or maybe this is a joke I make at my own expense. I long ago got my husband David’s initials inscribed on my arm. Shortly after, beneath that, the name of our first kid. Three years later, another kid and another name. This tidy stack is nothing like that skull and crossbones, insofar as I know just what it means.
But a few years on, firmly in my 40s, I did land on the person I wanted to be, and tattoos seemed one way of making that concrete. Maybe it’s that I finally had the budget (this is an expensive habit), maybe it’s that I had reached détente with the fact of my body, maybe it’s that I had a better grasp of the fact that I would, indeed, someday be just a skull and some bones, or at least understood that no one ever quite understands that. I can never count my tattoos, in part because I can’t see several of them—funny how our bodies contain us but elude our sight. It doesn’t matter, as quantity is not the point. It’s something more private, hard to fit into language—a tricky proposition for someone who has made that his work. I recently saw two old friends on the California beach. There they were: our middle-aged bodies. What, these two beautiful women wanted to know, pointing at my bicep, my shoulder, my arm, did these all mean?
I’m nothing like the cool grown-up I thought I was preparing myself to be when I was 22, getting a tattoo from my friend’s husband. Probably none of us end up being the people we think we’re going to be.
It’s not a secret. I was happy to oblige. This is a chair, designed at mid-century by Marco Zanuso. I had one as a child, imagined it into a mountain, a racetrack, a base for my GI Joes. Now it sits by my desk, and when I’m writing a book, some superstition has me stack the manuscripts there. The toy boat is because when my family was in Paris, my older son—too old for this childish diversion even then—rented one of these vessels to float in a fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, and was once again the vehicle-crazed toddler I had once known, a satisfied smile on his face.
Really, a lot of the tattoos have to do with my family—several are icons and motifs that make me think of the small town where we’ve spent so many summers. I have on my body reminders of the time we saw thousands of dragonflies swarming on the beach, of the house we rented by the bay that was coated, every evening, in the webs of hundreds of mosquito-mad spiders, of the butterflies so trusting they’ll land on your arm as you walk by, of the horseshoe crabs we find washed up every so often, visitors from some prehistoric time.
All these pictures are the individual artist’s invention, save the grinning whale on my forearm. That’s William Steig’s drawing, the whale the hero of a book I love so much I would get choked up when I read it to the boys before bed. Seems likely I’ll never read that book aloud to them again while trying not to cry. But maybe I can conjure the memory of the solid weight of a sleepy seven-year-old and a fidgety toddler, plastic cup of milk in hand.
Most of us have some instinct to capture these things forever; that’s why we save ticket stubs and outgrown baby clothes, take photographs of every memorable taco, the dog freaking out about the snow. We want to remember. This is a losing battle, and we know it. Maybe if I inscribe this stuff on my very body, it will last however long my body does. Maybe I’ve landed on a workaround.
A couple of years ago, I commissioned an artist to do a tangle of branches and birds on the left side of my back. The tattoos I get, fine-lined, only black, are not especially painful. Most times when I get a tattoo, I fall dead asleep, a shock response that reminds me how in some cultures, this act is a quasi-spiritual rite. But this proved an endurance test. It was winter, and I was shivering shirtless in a vast cold studio, the artist (a big guy) leaning over my body with all his weight. It was supposed to be a single sitting, but after five hours I could no longer bear it. I felt like such a failure, such a disappointment, like I’d fallen short of some stupid toxic idea I can’t help but have about being tough. The artist wrapped my back in plastic and told me that now that he is older, he, too, has trouble sitting for a tattoo for so long.
It seems inevitable that I’ll run out of skin, or interest, but maybe also time; if it’s hard for me to imagine myself at 60 getting a fresh tattoo, that might just be a failure of my imagination. It’s less that I think it unseemly and more that I worry I won’t be able to endure it, just as I can no longer have a third Manhattan at dinner or sleep past 6am—all those little reminders that you are, in fact, ageing. I am tattooed now, yes, but mostly I’m nothing like the cool grown-up I thought I was preparing myself to be when I was 22, getting a tattoo from my friend’s husband. Probably none of us end up being the people we think we’re going to be.
Once, I came back from an appointment (I can’t remember which one) and my younger son studied the new image on my body. “That’s cool, I guess,” he admitted, the praise for which so many parents wait in vain. “Maybe I’ll get that when I get my tattoo.” I was surprised; I asked if he was interested in getting one, when he’s an adult, but it emerged that he was under the impression that he had to, that it was an unavoidable part of adulthood. I laughed privately but corrected this misunderstanding. Being an adult, I told him, means that as long as it’s not illegal or cruel, you can do what you want. You don’t need to have a reason at all.
Originally published on Esquire US
Esquire US ran a list of “Things a Man Should Not Know” in their November 2002 issue. The list served as a strict and imposing doorman, a Patrick Swayze keeping the undesirables out of the Double Deuce that is the sophisticated man’s mind. We gave a thumbs-down to knowing both “the date on which the Olsen twins become legal” and “what happens to the little cows before they become the delicious veal on his plate.” We 86ed information out of male panic (“how to cross-stitch”), out of practicality (“his best friend’s salary”), and out of equal parts of both (“a single lyric from any song by O-Town”). We stand by this list.
One thing a man for sure did not know in November 2002 was how much information his brain would soon be deluged with. That Nokia phone in his pocket would become an iPhone that was never not in his hand. He would have a world of information at his fingertips, and a critical fact he would learn too late was that it absolutely blows to have a world of information at your fingertips. He would get every piece of news as it happened, and moments later he would get every idiot’s opinion on that news as it formed. Our brain bouncers need to be Jake Gyllenhaal jacked if we’re going to keep our temples tidy.
For the Too Much Information Age, here is the 2024 edition of “Things a Man Should NOT Know.” Enjoy it over a nice cross-stitch.
Originally published on Esquire US
My “view from the office” as I write this column is an expanse of iced- over ocean and snow-covered peaks, on the edge of the Arctic Circle. I’m aboard a polar explorer ship named Le Commandant Charcot, operated by French luxury cruise line Ponant, navigating the frosty waters off Greenland. Now, I absolutely hate the word ‘awesome’ when used to describe everyday things, like a tasty burger or a good movie. But the landscape here? Reader, it is legitimately, authentically, inarguably awesome.
The wildlife is impressive, too. On our first day out, I saw a couple of whales. Yesterday, I was awoken a little after 5am by the excited voice of our captain, Étienne Garcia, booming out of the speaker in my cabin, announcing that a polar bear had been spotted off the starboard bow of the vessel. I threw on my Heattech longjohns, Cleverley boots and Columbia fleece, grabbed my camera, and bolted for the deck. There she was, bounding across the ice. It was an incredible sight to begin the day with. (The bear, not my odd get-up.)
At the start of our journey, Captain Garcia—a spry Frenchman resembling a less sybaritic Serge Gainsbourg—had explained that seeing a polar bear from the deck of the ship was a wonderful thing, a rare treat few have the good fortune to experience. Encountering one of the beasts during a trek on the ice, meanwhile, is a far less attractive proposition.
Polar bears are the largest and deadliest bears on Earth. While their cousin, the American grizzly, will attack a person if it feels threatened or is worried for its cubs (you’ve seen The Revenant, right?), polar bears are strictly carnivorous—100 per cent meat diet, they don’t even want a side of fries—and view homo sapiens as a legitimate food source. They will not hesitate to make a meal of you. They’re fast, running up to 40 kilometres per hour, and will as happily stalk, kill and eat a human as a seal.
The local Inuit people return the favour, hunting polar bears for food and their water-resistant pelts. “The meat is good,” an Inuit guide told me. “It’s sweet.” A few hours after our ship’s bear encounter, I found myself seated atop one of the tasty yet fearsome animal’s skin on a dog sled, riding across the frozen sea to look at a glacier.
Her hull is rated Polar Class 2—bested only by hard-as-nails Russian atomic icebreakers—making Le Commandant Charcot one of the few vessels rugged enough to penetrate the ice in this beautiful but forbidding part of the world. In fact, she’s the only purpose-built passenger ship that can reach places like the east Greenland coast where I enjoyed my bearskin sled ride and glacial sightseeing. “We are the only one,” Captain Garcia said. “To have this kind of experience, there are no others.” Want to cruise to the North Pole while dining on Michelin- standard cuisine? This is the sloop for you, friend.
Belying her tough exterior, the ship is tastefully designed and extremely luxurious. One might expect as much, with Ponant being owned by France’s multi-billionaire Pinault family, proprietors of Kering, the parent company of Gucci, Saint Laurent, Brioni, Bottega Veneta and numerous other iconic labels.
The menu at the more formal of the ship’s two restaurants is the work of acclaimed chef Alain Ducasse, and the wine list boasts beaucoup bottles from Romanée-Conti, Petrus, Chateau Angelus and Cheval Blanc, among other vigneron big guns. The house pour Champagne is Henriot; the standard whisky, Talisker 10-year- old; my vodka martinis are made with Grey Goose.
The décor—all tasteful slates, taupe leather and matte Nordic wood panelling—is by architects Wilmotte & Associés and hospitality interiors specialists, Studio Jean-Philippe Nuel. The ship accommodates a maximum of 270 guests, with around 200 staff serving them, and on my journey the ratio is better than 1:1. In all, it’s the most genteel way of seeing the Arctic Circle.
Late last year I found myself in another circle altogether, one designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. It was the 10th edition of an ongoing project called MPavilion. This initiative, funded by wildly successful Australian fashion entrepreneur Naomi Milgrom, sees leading architects from around the world invited to create a temporary pavilion that will be constructed in Queen Victoria Park in central Melbourne, serving as a meeting place and event space for a six-month period, before being moved elsewhere.
Most philanthropists direct their money to medicine, education, ecology, politics or the arts. The built environment tends to be overlooked. When I asked her why she so enthusiastically and generously supported this unique programme, costing her eponymous foundation millions each year, Milgrom said, “It’s a celebration of architecture. Not only of the built form, but of the idea that architecture can inform the way we live and that we can have that debate about how we can use architecture and design to do things better at the intersection of people, buildings and nature.”
Ando’s pavilion—his first structure in Australia—was so well received that last month, it was announced that it has been given a second lease of life. It will now remain in place for an additional six months (perhaps staying permanently, rumour has it). Before the zen-brutalist structure’s unveiling, Ando told me, “It evokes Japan’s traditional walled gardens. Inside there is a space to reflect, interact and appreciate that which is contained within, be it nature, art or people.”
The building may be cast in Ando’s signature grey concrete, but it is far from cold. This is the Osaka-based architect’s magic: his austere aesthetic serves to frame the surrounding greenery beautifully, while features like ponds or pools mirror the sky and trees. “One of the reasons I chose the architects that I have,” Milgrom said, “is because of their celebration of nature.”
“For MPavilion, the spatial sequence of circles and squares create spatial sequences of light and dark,” Ando explained. “These change throughout the day and the seasons as the sun moves through the sky. The surfaces that the light touches also change—walls reveal arresting patterns of shadows, while the water from the reflecting pool may cast dappled patterns on a previously plain surface.”
Ando told me he is proudest of his buildings when they manage to overcome a significant structural challenge, as the MPavilion did by successfully integrating a 17-metre central slit in one of its walls. The natural background seen through the gap is an ever-changing visual tableau: “The result is a moment in architecture that reflects our joy of living,” Ando said.
When it comes down to it, as grand as they may be, the magnificent boat I’m now aboard and Ando’s Melbournian building are merely lenses through which to view the beauty of nature. They are frames for the greatest work of art of all—the world around us. Which is circular, by the way, much as barmy Flat Earthers may wish to convince us otherwise.
Like many nations across the globe, Singapore’s birth rate has been falling for some time. It’s nothing new. What is new is the record low in Singapore last year.
The overall fertility rate fell to 0.97 in 2023—roughly half of what it was in the late ’80s. That means, on average, people are having less than one child during their entire reproductive years.
While Singaporean birth rates have slowly declined over the past few decades, this is the first time they’ve fallen below 1.0. That’s bad news for Singapore’s economic future. At the same time, it stems from a much larger issue under the surface that may not get as much attention as it should.
Most developed nations need a total fertility rate (TFR) of around 2.1 to grow their population. Anything less than that means a likely decline in the future. That’s also a figure Singapore and several other Asian countries have struggled to reach in recent years.
Singapore’s rapid TFR decline began in the ’80s. Since then, it’s been falling almost every year. The only noticeable spikes have been in 1988, 2000 and 2012. That’s not necessarily surprising, considering each of those years was a Year of the Dragon.
Interestingly, the TFR isn’t the only birth-related factor that’s changed in that time. People are also giving birth later in life. In 1980, women aged 25 to 29 had the highest fertility rate by far. Today, that honour belongs to the 30 to 34 age group. Even women aged 35 to 39 have higher birth rates than women in their 20s.
That trend suggests Singapore’s TFR may fall even further in the future. Other countries also struggle with falling birth rates, but in some of those, older women’s fertility rates are increasing, offsetting some of the decline in younger women. That’s not the case in Singapore, which could mean a faster fall than most.
At this point, you might be asking, “So? Who cares?” Sure, a declining population sounds bad, but people should have the right not to have children if they choose. You can’t force people to have kids—nor should you—but population decline can seriously affect the economy.
Think of it in terms of taxes. Fewer births now means fewer adults paying taxes later on. Singapore may struggle to fund some programmes if that gap grows wide enough. That could mean less investment in public infrastructure, a smaller police force, or diminished monetary support for growing businesses and social services.
Taxes aside, a drop in the birth rate leads to a smaller workforce. Fewer people contributing to the economy will make it harder for businesses to grow. It could also place more pressure on workers, as fewer people will have to do the same work that a larger workforce once did. That’s a recipe for stress.
All this would be a challenge for any country, but Singapore is in a uniquely vulnerable position. The nation has one of the fastest-growing GDPs in the world. That—combined with an already-present labour shortage—means a steep workforce decline could create massive disruptions as the economy has to slam the brakes.
How did this happen? As with most things of this nature, it’s a complicated issue.
The easiest answer is that culture is changing. Newer generations aren’t having as many children because they don’t want kids. The traditional family dynamic isn’t as popular as it once was, so there’s less societal pressure to have lots of children.
A competitive job market could also be part of the problem. Making it big in your career is a big deal. Unlike in the past, that applies to both men and women today. Consequently, you’ll see more women putting motherhood aside to pursue their careers first. It’s hard to surge ahead of the competition when you’re out of the game for several months looking after a newborn.
Along similar lines, many young Singaporeans are getting married later in life to pursue a better education or career first. Just 10 years ago, only 27.3 per cent of Singaporeans 25 or older had a university degree. Today, 36.6 per cent do.
That’s certainly not a problem—in fact, it’s great—but this shift does mean people are getting married later or not at all. In turn, fewer individuals have children and those who may want kids have a smaller window of opportunity.
All these factors contribute to Singapore’s declining birth rate, but there’s something bigger at play. Perhaps the most significant underlying issue—and the most problematic—is that having kids is expensive. Living in Singapore is also costly. As those trends grow, fewer people can afford to plan a family.
Singapore isn’t just pricey. It’s the most expensive place to live in the world. It has been for nine of the past 11 years. The economy may be booming, but that can be a double-edged sword, as rents, utilities and household goods keep getting costlier.
Raising a kid in any context can be expensive. Those added childcare expenses on top of an already staggering cost of living can be the final straw for many families. Even if some couples can afford it, the prospect may be too intimidating to take the financial risk.
It’s worth noting that child-related costs go beyond buying diapers and paying for more food. You may also want a bigger space, especially if you plan on having more than one kid. That means higher rent or buying a house. You may need to take time off work. Can you afford to do that if your company doesn’t offer paid parental leave?
The COVID-19 pandemic made this already growing problem more extreme. It paused new construction, leading to uneven housing supply and demand to create skyrocketing home costs. It led to rising prices as many businesses had to adapt to stay afloat. Inflation has cooled a bit, but it’s still high.
What happens now? Some government officials seem to think throwing money at the issue will make it disappear. That includes raising the Baby Bonus Cash Gift to up to SGD13,000 and increasing the Housing Grant for first-time families. Government-paid paternal leave is also doubling to four weeks.
These efforts make raising a family more affordable. That’s a step in the right direction. However, these are tax-funded programmes. Lower tax revenue from a declining population could jeopardise the future of this funding. In a way, the problem has gotten big enough that it’s counteracting the most straightforward solution.
Singapore will have to tackle the overall cost of living, not just the cost of parenthood, to treat the disease and not the symptoms. Considering how tax-funded programmes may be of limited help in the future, the government may need to look for other solutions than cash gifts.
Promoting fairer markets by busting effective monopolies and lowering the barrier to entry in some industries can foster local competition. This could lead to price decreases on many goods and stimulate the domestic economy while reducing reliance on outside sources.
Price caps and fairer workplace practices may also help. It’s a tricky situation, though. Making a country more affordable while supporting countrywide business growth is challenging. Cultural shifts may be needed to help people overcome fears over economic risks and child-raising.
SINGAPORE NEEDS TO ADDRESS AFFORDABILITY to fix its declining birth rate, which is emblematic of a much bigger problem. To fix the declining population, the nation must first repair its economy—not for the big businesses but for the middle- and low-income families.
Thinking of the birth rate solely in terms of family dynamics is missing the big picture. There are larger things at play. Only when people recognise that, would it be possible to move forward.
I’m at Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat restaurant. My friend’s eyes are rolling to the back of her head. “Oh my COD.” She squeals before we fall into a fit of giggles for no reason other than her highball-induced mispronunciation. We’re having an absolute blast but it’s already 8pm and the main course has only just begun.
“I think we might have to skip dessert if I’m going to be out of here by nine,” I state as she takes another mouthful of her orgasmic blackened cod. She chews it slowly before responding.
“Ok, sounds good. I’ll get a mochi to go”.
We stumble out onto Grosvenor Square.
“Sorry again for being so late, James. I’ll leave earlier for you next month.” she apologises. “We’re going to his other restaurant, right? 1980 or something?”.
“It’s called 1890. Yes! I can’t wait. I’ll book the table for 6pm. We won’t get away with being late for that one though. It just got a Michelin star so it’s going to be busy.”
She promises to be there at 5:45pm.
I don’t have a pet. I don’t have children. I don’t have to be up early the next day. I simply like to be home at least two hours before bedtime, and all my friends respect it.
Things weren’t always that way. I spent decades making excuses, and when I couldn’t get away with them, I’d stay out when I longed to be at home; showered, then on the sofa, winding down with a good book or mindless TV. Following this routine calms both my body and mind. And when it’s time to hit the hay, I drift off in minutes rather than tossing and turning. Back then, nobody understood my ritual, and honestly, even I thought I sounded like a grandparent. My friends also made leaving before them extremely difficult; chanting for “just one more”, or accusing me of “being boring”. At that point in my life, I wanted to stay as far away from that label as possible, so I went with the grain. I stayed out till all the others were ready to call it a night.
But then I grew up. Every year that passes, we care less and less about what others think. Not so much in a way that hurts them, but in a way that’s more transparent. I used to dread when friends talked about destination weddings because that meant I might be getting an invite. I went on many, using up valuable PTO to go and holiday with mostly strangers, doing things I didn’t want to do like paintballing (ouch!) or rehearsal dinners (snooze...). This is when I worked full-time and every day of annual leave was precious. On the contrary, I wouldn’t have (and years later when I eloped, didn’t) expected anyone to travel across the world and drop thousands just to see me put a ring on it. There are plenty of other ways to celebrate love. I instated a rule that I would not RSVP to any more destination weddings. No exceptions. Did I lose any friends? No. Did I have more time and money to go to places I actually wanted to go? Yes.
The rule worked so well that next, I put it towards promoting earlier evenings. I kept telling everyone that I needed to be home at a “reasonable” time for my bedtime ritual, and I was off the hook by around 11pm. Friends got used to seeing me head off first, and the funny thing is I noticed many followed suit. Even the so-called “night owls” admitted they loved starting the evenings earlier as it didn’t screw up their following day. Eventually, 9pm became my sweet spot for retiring home. I loved switching clubs for bars. You can have a conversation in a bar, and sometimes a little boogie if that’s the vibe. No fun lost.
I meet my friends after work in central nowadays, say 5:30pm or 6pm, and for three hours we wine and dine. When weekends roll around, we have the whole daytime at our disposal. For museums, afternoon tea, matinee shows, and the like. I don’t get FOMO since I get plenty of human interaction and enjoy a robust social life during those hours. Of course, there are exceptions. When my DJ friend had his birthday, the invite read 9pm to 2am. I told him in advance I’d stay till midnight before slipping out quietly. Irish exits are great at big events if you let the host know: nobody needs to feel bad and you don’t end up dragging others in the party out the door with you. I often offer to arrive early and help them set up, which gives us extra catch-up time too.
I’m certainly not the only one who is adopting the start-early, end-early social ethos. Burnout culture is among us, and many working folk are overpacking their schedules. Prioritising wellness means quality over quantity. I’d much rather spend three hours with one or two friends sipping from a vintage bottle of Billecart-Salmon than do an all-nighter with randos splashing Smirnoff. I do understand the appeal of the latter. Perhaps because I’m married, the former suits me far, far more.
We just need to be honest with ourselves and the circle we hang out with. People will respect your values if you make them crystal clear, and a rule helps set expectations so disappointment is avoided. Excuses are stressful, and you can only use them so many times.
I spent too long sacrificing my needs when those excuses ran out, but what I didn’t realise was saying no to someone else was, actually, saying yes to myself.
I knew what to expect. Both of my parents had experienced retinal detachments, so I was terrified but prepared. The warning signs sounded vague: “Be wary of sudden bright flashes or arcs of light,” doctors told me. In reality, it was more like hot white blaster fire ricocheting off the hull of an Imperial light cruiser. “Be wary of any new ‘floaters,’ ” they said. When the floaters came, they were like black, stringy Dementors descending unexpectedly over my field of vision.
I’ve always seen the world through this perspective—everything filtered through what I watched, heard, read, and loved. But consuming pop culture like the world was ending when it actually was wasn’t so much fun. By December 2020, we had binged, read, spun enough. My wife and I decided to focus on our health, going on nightly mile-long walks around our Forest Hills neighbourhood, in Queens. One evening, the symptoms started in my left eye. We rushed to a retina specialist for outpatient laser eye surgery. Pew-pew-pew, and the hole was patched. Phew. More lasers in subsequent visits (both eyes, to be safe). My own up-close-and-personal Pink Floyd light-show experience, with encore performances.
Our newfound fixation on health was timely. A staph infection puckered my left calf like Freddy Krueger’s. Meanwhile, gummy bears were apparently killing me—prediabetes had matured into full-blown Wilford Brimley–style “diabeetus.” I was hitting middle age hard. I was no Wolverine; my healing ability was vastly inferior. While my body was failing, my mind was racing. The realisation that “life moves pretty fast” made me channel my inner John Hughes, as I attacked my decades-gestating manuscript like I was frantically writing a Ferris Bueller sequel.
And so, at 48 years old, I was finally able to see my pandemic project, my debut novel, published to great acclaim. No one was happier than my mother. Her da xinganbao (“big precious”) was finally a published author. I have always taken after her family: thick black hair, broad nose, the love of the written word. I was inspired by my grandfather, a famous Chinese reporter who sacrificed everything to immigrate to the US for journalistic integrity. He then spent much of his life caring for his fragile wife, my grandmother, who suffered from anxiety and a weak heart. So much of them was yi chuan, inherited by us. The noble talents, but also the poor eyesight, diabetes, and mental-health issues.
My mother had spent much of her time looking after the men in her life: shuttling my grandfather to appointments, working 12-hour days while her husband pursued his doctorate, raising her sons to do good. But now, like mine, her priorities were shifting: The pandemic presented an opportunity. My mother informed me that she had started writing, too. Or rather, she had resumed writing, tapping back into the collegiate aspirations she abandoned when she began her life here in the States.
And so, at 73 years old, Grace I-Yin Jeng was finally able to see her pandemic project, her first essays, accepted for publication in a Chinese journal.
Both of us were always inspired by my grandfather’s professional legacy, even more so after he passed. His final message years prior was one simple eternal character, ai (“love”), writ large in marker across the unfolded panels of a Chinese newspaper, left on the table of his hospital bed. As I wrote about such big ideas expressed through small moments, I wondered what my mother was writing about. Her childhood in Taiwan and the Philippines? Her early struggles in New York City as an entrepreneur? (She owned three shoe stores.) Having two teenagers and then a third miracle baby in her 40s, or helping thousands as a Social Security caseworker? Her response: “Thoughts on the season changing to autumn—and about you becoming a writer.” She still can’t help but focus on the men in her life.
What no one saw coming: my vision growing exponentially worse. In August 2023, as I was starting the final edits on my book, the lasers stopped working on my left eye. I would have to go under the knife. The vitrectomy would replace my eyeball juice with fresh-squeezed artificial replacement fluid, and a self-dissolving gas bubble would be injected to push my retina into place. A painless procedure (thanks, propofol and Valium!), but the following seven days of constant facedown positioning would be absolute torture. I was inverted and sore, and sleeping with my CPAP machine (like Hannibal Lecter in his face mask) was inhumane. Worse yet, in December 2023, I learned that my right eye required the same process. I immediately burst into tears.
Most people will get cataracts (the slow, natural decay of the lenses in their eyes) as they enter their 70s and 80s. But as a result of these surgeries, my eyes are undergoing vast changes until they stabilise. I am fast developing cataracts and losing my sight. (And no, my other senses aren’t heightened. Turns out I’m not Daredevil, either.) Each check-up fills me with dread. If the vitrectomy surgeries don’t hold, I may need further procedures to save my vision. If it’s only the cataracts I have to contend with, then hopefully within the year, my eyeballs will be “ripe” enough for this next round of routine surgery to replace my zombified lenses. Nothing makes you feel so old as looking forward to receiving the same treatment as octogenarians.
On the other hand, my mom is in great health, hopping on airplanes and cruise ships. On her last visit to Taipei, she got a blue whale tattoo. In honour of my dad, the marine biologist? “No deeper meaning,” she insists. “It’s cute and I like the ocean.” My mother, pleading with her sons to take her to see Bon Jovi. My mother, smoking weed for the first time. She’s been in her renaissance. But plans don’t always work out; her Cabo trip was curtailed when my father grew uncharacteristically pale and refused the buffet. He’s been dealing with his own health crisis ever since: leukemia. While we are slowly being attacked by our own bodies, she keeps us afloat, as per usual—sorting the pills for my dad, sending frozen dumplings to me. All done with grace, by Grace.
Nothing makes you feel so old as looking forward to receiving the same treatment as octogenarians.
Her “big baby,” tall and strong. But now I can no longer lift anything heavier than a half-full banker’s box for fear of putting pressure on these fragile eyes. What I fear, what I am most wary of now, is time—our mortal flesh fades fast, in spite of all we have left to do, say, and see.
Recently, my mother started letting her bob go grey. My temples, too, grow more into the same signature silver of that pliant genius Reed Richards. But I feel further from fantastic, as my limbs become increasingly stiff and achy every day. My eyes, too, miss out on so much wonder before them.
My mother has read my novel and is my biggest champion. Soon I will get to read her new work—in translation, sized up to a 24-point font. But there are still so many stories she hasn’t yet written. I am afraid to ask about them, to hear them spoken in this life or the next. But isn’t everything that’s inherited and passed down simply about ai—love—in the end? At my book events, I can make out her shape, beaming proudly from the front row, that familiar magnetic red phone case flapping wildly as she tries to record a video. What I experience now, however, is all blurry, hazy like a dream. I’m hoping once my vision is renewed, I’ll get to see this all again with her, for the first time and not the last.
Originally published on Esquire US
No is my first word when people ask if my partner, Ben, and I are planning to have children. “But,” I will continue, and Ben will steel himself for what he knows is coming, “we’re not ruling out a Punky Brewster situation.” We do not want a baby. But if a sassy preteen with her own unique fashion sense were to be abandoned in a grocery-store parking lot, as on the ’80s NBC sitcom? We’ll take that kid in, teach her some important life lessons—and along the way, maybe learn some, too. If it happens, it happens.
I don’t want kids of my own. For a long time, I assumed the desire to be a father would just blink on after a certain number of years, like a check-engine light on my emotional dashboard. But it never did. Not enough to get the wheels turning on it, to make me spend the fortune surrogacy costs or the time adoption does. Ben and I can’t accidentally have a baby, so the decision would need to be made with a high degree of intention. That intention was never there, and the only thing a kid needs less than an ambivalent father is two of them. So now we’re hovering around either end of 50, the ship long having sailed.
We’re probably never going to have children. And I’m fine with that.
So why did I add a probably to that sentence two sentences ago?
Recently, my friend John said this to me: “What you do on a Sunday is who you are.” He’s right. You’re in church if you’re religious, you’re on your bike in spandex if you’re sporty, you’re at a matinee if you’re old and have a large bag of wrapped candies you’ve been meaning to open. If you have kids, your Sundays are busy: You’re carting them from a birthday party to a soccer practice to an urgent-care facility. You’re putting other people’s needs before your own, and those people frequently vomit on you. You’re a parent. Every day and always.
John doesn’t have kids, either. We had this conversation on a Sunday afternoon, over Bloody Marys, actively avoiding any further reflection on what that made us.
Roughly 15 years ago, my friends around my age started having babies, and I started to see them less and less. When I did, they came with strollers and pacifiers and water wings from a product universe I do not interact with. Over the summer, my high school friend Neil was in town with his wife and three kids, the youngest of whom is my godson, and I had them over to the pool for the afternoon. “Can I pick up anything,” Neil texted, and I replied, “Nope, we’re pretty well stocked up.” And then I texted back, “Actually, can you grab literally anything a child would eat or drink?”
My friend John said to me: “What you do on a Sunday is who you are.” This was on a Sunday, over Bloody Marys.
I don’t know that replacing those friends was on my mind, but around that time I did form new friendships with people a decade or so younger. People who could drop everything and go see a band with me on a Tuesday. People whose Sundays were wide open.
Now those guys have started having babies.
Recently at a dinner party, someone asked me if I had kids, and I said the Punky Brewster thing, and I was met with a blank face. “You don’t know who Punky Brewster is,” I said. A moment later, he lit up. “Wait, yes,” he said. “Teenage doctor.” This guy was a couple decades younger than me, too young to know Punky Brewster from Doogie Howser, MD. He has three kids. I wish him the best of luck.
The conservative philosopher Yoram Hazony said, “The only honourable thing is to get married and have children, lots of children, and raise them, and if you’re not doing that, then what you’re doing is dishonourable.” This is a harsh assessment, and I take comfort in the fact that the approval of a conservative philosopher is probably not on the menu for me. But this message gets across in subtler, more familiar ways. En route to visit one of my nieces and her newborn son with my mother—now a great-grandmother—she enthused, “Oh, isn’t this fun.” And then she continued, “Can you even imagine not having children?” It wasn’t a memory lapse, exactly. It was a statement of our shared humanity: We’re good people, and good people have kids. Right?
In America there has always been a low-key dismissal of people who choose not to be parents. You’re assumed to be feckless, or selfish, or sad. When America’s Sweetheart J.D Vance griped to Tucker Carlson about the “childless cat ladies” who evidently run America, he then described the childless as “miserable in their own lives and the choices they’ve made, so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
I don’t want to be a father, and I know I don’t want America to be miserable about it. But there is enough of a cultural expectation for a man to be a dad that sometimes I have to stop and think: Wait, am I miserable about it? Am I having fun, or am I just telling myself I am?
I still see my friends who are parents. But the kids from that first wave are getting to be teenagers, and soon they’ll have driver’s licenses and better things to do than hear a bunch of old people yell about Paul Westerberg. I get to see the new wave of kids, too, and discover what kinds of parents my young friends are becoming. There aren’t a ton of role models for the childless in general, and we’re in the first generation of gay men to get old en masse, period. Some days I feel like we’re pioneers, and some days it feels like we’re just lost in the woods.
And then I’ll say, “Hey, Ben, let’s get on a plane and go somewhere this weekend,” and we do. If what you do on a Sunday is who you are, then I am what I always wanted to be, which is whatever I feel like. I hope that doesn’t make you miserable.
Originally published on Esquire US
It was 10am on a Sunday, and I, of course, was still in bed. In my floating consciousness, I felt hands on my shoulder—someone was shaking me vigorously. This immediately sent me into alert mode because being shaken awake had been a rarity since my secondary school days. I’d usually groan and ignore the person, but on that day, I felt sober. My eyes shot open to find my sister hovering over me, which was odd because she wasn’t someone to wake me up without a reason. When she spoke, her voice sounded almost puzzled as she said, “Kobe Bryant just died.”
My sister doesn’t watch basketball, let alone play it. I could give her two pictures—one of Michael Jordan, another of Kobe Bryant—and five times out of ten, she’d probably point to MJ and say, “That’s Kobe Bryant.” She’s clueless when it comes to sports, but she knew his name. She knew how important he was, and she knew the impact his death would have—not just on me but on the world.
“Without studying, preparation, and practice, you’re leaving the outcome to fate. I don’t do fate.” — Kobe Bryant
Perhaps it’s the idea of this man, who seemed to conquer every challenge he ever faced through sheer will, perishing helplessly in a fiery blaze. Or maybe it’s the heartbreaking loss of his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, alongside him and seven other passengers. Maybe it’s the cruel irony of both—a larger-than-life figure who spent his life obsessing over dictating his own destiny, reduced to a mere mortal, powerless during his final moments, unable to protect the daughter he cherished above anything else.
Whatever the reason, his death was devastating to basketball fans worldwide—so much so that it seems they’ve subconsciously created a religion built around him. Fans now hunt for significant sporting dates that coincide with the jersey numbers he wore for the Lakers, 8 and 24. Twenty-fourth of August has become the unofficial, official Kobe Day. Yet, in the recently concluded Paris Olympics, the gold medal basketball game between France and the USA fell on 8/10/24—a date that incorporates not only his Lakers numbers but also the 10 he wore as an Olympian.
Wait, so which is the real Kobe Day? Fans see his jersey numbers lining up on the calendar and convince themselves of a greater cosmic design. After all, what are the odds of the gold medal game happening on Kobe Day? They need to win gold for Kobe. Kobe will make sure Team USA wins. This is Kobe speaking to us. Ironically, the same men who mock women for following astrology now find themselves doing the same thing through Kobe numerology. This is precisely how fans have inadvertently formed a sports-centric faith around the Black Mamba, without even realising it.
For those unfamiliar, Bryant bestowed himself the nickname Black Mamba in the mid-2000s to create an alter ego that helped him separate his personal life and tap into an unrelenting focus on the court. Rumours suggest he drew inspiration from a documentary about the black mamba snake, admired for its fearlessness, precision, and deadly strike—qualities that mirrored his fierce approach to basketball. You still hear tales today of his unmatched work ethic, passed down by his peers and contemporaries:
Kobe played a bench warmer to 100 multiple times when he was in high school. In his worst game, he still won 100–12.
Mamba used to learn Spanish and French so he could trash-talk European players in their native languages and psych them out.
In 2015, Kobe injured his right shoulder in a game but continued playing single-handedly with his left hand.
During the 2008 Olympics, Kobe would come in at 8 a.m. with ice on his knees, sweat-drenched through his workout gear. Meanwhile, players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were still yawning and asking, “Where in the hell is he coming from?”
These stories now linger in the archives of YouTube, are given new life on Instagram and repackaged for new audiences on TikTok. Because of Kobe’s untimely death, these stories are on the path to becoming myths—but who’s to say they won’t eventually transform into legends?
Every religion needs a scripture; some kind of moral or ethical code to live by. Kobe fans, of course, have the “Mamba Mentality,” a philosophy created by Bryant himself that preaches discipline, perseverance, and curiosity. Bryant even published a book titled The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, offering a detailed guide to his mindset and practices. The book, like a scripture, contains personal reflections, wisdom, and lessons, and is treated like a source of truth for those seeking to emulate Bryant's success. Other elite athletes like Naomi Osaka and Anthony Davis have adopted this mindset, appearing almost as apostles to Bryant’s teachings. But this framework transcends sports itself—the idea that, through rigorous application of the Mamba Mentality, one can achieve a form of immortality through lasting impact and legacy is malleable and can be applied to various areas of life.
The idea of religious themes in sports isn’t something new. In the book Understanding Sport as a Religious Phenomenon, Eric Bain-Selbo and Gregory Sapp posit that the human need that drives religious participation—a sense of belonging, identity, and emotional experiences—are the same needs that compel people to engage deeply in sports. Think of mass gatherings, chants, and superstitions that reflect traditional religious expressions. Are you seeing the parallel?
Kobe Bryant wasn’t perfect. In 2003, a 19-year-old hotel employee accused him of sexual assault. While Bryant maintained that the encounter was consensual, the accuser disagreed, leading to a civil lawsuit that was eventually settled outside of court. It was a horrific situation that left the victim scarred and Bryant’s reputation obliterated.
Redemption is a powerful narrative often found in religious texts, and Bryant’s life reflects this narrative of repentance and public forgiveness. Following his legal issue, he issued a public apology to the victim and began repairing his personal life with his wife and children. In the years that followed, his family weathered the storm, and Bryant matured. He became deeply involved in charitable work, particularly in youth sports, education, and initiatives that supported disadvantaged communities. On the court, he became a mentor for young athletes, positioning himself as a role model who inspired many with his work ethic and dedication. After his retirement, he became a primary advocate for women’s basketball, emphasising the need for greater support for female athletes—who historically received less attention and funding compared to men’s sports. As a proud “girl dad” of three daughters, Bryant dedicated time to coaching his daughter Gianna’s youth basketball team.
For many fans, the last image they have of him is of a tender, loving father who passionately shared his love of basketball with his daughter—a far cry from his younger days when stories of his intensity and playing style screamed macho, red-blooded energy. While we cannot speak for the victims or assume their forgiveness, in the public eye, this journey quietly marked the closing chapter of Bryant’s life story of redemption.
A decade ago, kids would yell “Kobe!” as they shot crumpled paper into trash bins. Whether kids nowadays still yell his name before taking a shot or have replaced it with “Curry” remains uncertain. The future generation’s understanding of Bryant’s legacy and its lasting impact is yet to unfold. Will the next wave of athletes born after Bryant’s death practice the Mamba Mentality as a guiding philosophy? Will they look to him and start praying before important games? I don’t know, but it’s fascinating to observe.
For now, what seems certain is the unifying power of Bryant’s legacy among his devoted fans. Across different backgrounds, cultures, and political ideologies, there is a shared identity and common ground to be had. This social cohesion spans oceans and borders, satisfying the human need for connection, inspiration, and belonging. After all, this has long been the role religion has served for societies, centuries before the deification of Kobe Bryant.
Beware the cunning fox. According to evolutionary biologists, the rural red fox (Vulpes vulpes) has been steadily, stealthily begging her way into our home and hearth for nearly a century now. It wasn’t until this year, though, that I actually found one on my doorstep.
It was about 11 o’clock on a fine spring night when a crashing noise out front alerted me to the visitor. I was inside, with the curtains drawn, watching the 1989 Kevin Costner-starring film Field of Dreams, while my family slept upstairs. Have you seen the 1989 Kevin Costner-starring film Field of Dreams? It’s about Ray (Costner), an Iowa farmer, who staves off mid-life ennui, fear of mortality and unresolved feelings of guilt towards his dead father, by mowing down his profitable cornfield and building in its stead a baseball field for ghosts.
Everyone tells Ray he’s lost it; that he’ll go bankrupt, his wife will leave him and take the kid, but this man has an unshakable faith, summed up by the film’s most famous line: “If you build it, he will come.” Good film, that Field of Dreams. And maybe, too, there’s something of the doggedly optimistic, “If-you-build-it-he-will-come” attitude in the foxes’ plot to get in good with us humans?
It was right at that point in the film when the ghost of Archie “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster) is finally stepping up to bat, after wasting his life and sporting promise as a much-beloved small-town doctor, when I heard that crashing sound. I hit pause on Field of Dreams and opened the front door to a Patio of Nightmares: my window box, upturned and smashed; soil and geraniums strewn all over, and there, lying across my welcome mat, in a gruesome parody of inter-species friendship, was the bloody corpse of an adult fox. The sound of feral teen laughter floating off into the night air offered the only clue as to what had happened.
Sadly not everyone is as alert to the foxes’ stratagems as I have now become
What now? Was my home being marked as a future target for young Satanists? Was this a warning to repent my urban ways and respect the awesome power of Mother Nature? After fly-tipping the remains in an undisclosed location (Sorry to Newham Council, but have you ever tried to dispose of a body before the school-run?), I settled instead on these two take-away truths: 1) Broken Britain needs to bring back the youth clubs, and 2) There are more foxes about than there used to be.
Scientists attribute this latter point to a process known as “self-domestication”. There isn’t total consensus on the cause, but one widespread theory suggests that as human cities have expanded and encroached on rural habitats, foxes have adapted by becoming more tame. Zoologists define “tameness” as an animal’s tolerance of humans in close proximity. Or, in the human species, a tolerance of other humans in close proximity, as evidenced by, say, choosing to stay at home of an evening and watch a Kevin Costner film, instead of going out on the prowl with the rest of your pack.
Foxes are likewise tiring of the nightlife. As with those adult children who move back in with their parents after a few years of paying sky-high London rents on gutter-low salaries, foxes are sick of living by their wits and fending for themselves. They want in on the cushy lifestyle of the pet dog or cat. The short game might be to bury Dixy Fried Chicken in your flower bed, but the long game is to snuggle up beside you in your marital bed.
Sadly not everyone is as alert to the foxes’ stratagems as I have now become. About 20 minutes up the North Circular, in my mum’s more gentrified London suburb, humans still have the upper hand in the vulpine-sapien power struggle and a certain complacency has set in. Would I look in on the house, my mum asked, while she was away on holiday? Sure. Would I water the plants and feed the cat? Of course. And would I also put some food out for the fox family that frequents her back garden, along with their mange medication from the vet? Absolutely not.
My principled stand, however heroic, is a lonely one. I’m yet to hear of any London households officially keeping a fox as a pet, but the foxes make regular, unopposed incursions and have long since won the air war of propaganda. Three of my children’s classmates are named “Fox” (“Fox” is to the little bourgeois boy babies of 2024 as “Jack” was in 1994); a local community mural has been unveiled, of a Disney-eyed fox staring wistfully at a butterfly; and everyone now knows the source of those once-mysterious strangled screams you hear at night. It’s not someone being murdered. Well, it might be. But it’s also the foxes’ obnoxiously loud mating call, a reminder that they’re having more sex than the rest of us.
A glance in the mirror reassures me my ears are as firm as ever and likewise my strong, virile jaw
Not for long, though. According to Dmitry Belyayev, the Soviet geneticist whose decades-long experiment studied domestication in a group of silver foxes, tameness is only the first stage in the process. Next comes the gradual occurrence of corresponding biological changes, such as “reduced sexual dimorphism” (becoming less sexually attractive), floppier ears and smaller jaws. A glance in the mirror reassures me my ears are as firm as ever and likewise my strong, virile jaw, but worryingly, another of Belyayev’s tell-tale signs, “fur depigmentation”, is evident in grey patches around my temples. Arguably, I’m also showing “unique coat colours and patterns”, having started to dress more like a CBeebies presenter, in primary-coloured jumpsuits and “fun” knitwear, ever since the birth of my first child.
Perhaps the smart move here is to stop fighting it and make peace, not only with the foxes’ domestication, but also with my own. I could do that. Or—hear me out—I could mow down my mum’s hollyhocks and convert her garden into a fox-sized baseball field in the hopes of attracting their ghosts to replay the 1919 World Series. People will think I’ve lost it, but then, didn’t they say the same thing about Kevin Costner?
Originally published on Esquire UK
My process of composition is a long and sinuous one: first an idea comes to me, usually by serendipity. I can now allow the idea to incubate and grow into a fully formed piece—a novel or a short story. That period of incubation is often long, but when the story spills onto the page I am often satisfied because it has been a long time forming. But in 2011 when I completed the novel I had been writing since 2009, I felt that the narrative perspective was not right. It wasn’t a third-person narration; I had already tried that. It wasn’t a simple first-person narration; I had already tried that too. So what then? I left the book in frustration and began writing other things until I flew to Nigeria that summer. It had rained on my way to our house in Makurdi, but on arriving, the sun was shining and it had turned hot. I took a quick shower and lay in my old bed, now occupied by my younger brother Benjamin, who was nine at the time.
Benjamin had been waiting for me to come to the room so he could talk to me alone. He was taller than I had thought he would be—I hadn’t seen him in three years. He had a small scar on the side of his head, and even in the heat, he’d put the new cheap shirt I had bought him over the soap-worn one he was wearing. He was happy. He was talking, wanting to fill me in on the happenings since I was gone. Did I know that there have been changes in the neighbourhood? A new supermarket had been built just two blocks from our house—did I see it? I nodded, yawning. The family next door, who lived in the shack that formed this big contrast with our concrete, gated house, lost their dad last year—did I hear about it? I perhaps didn’t answer. I was tired from the 16 or so hours travel, falling asleep.
“Eh, brother, you know last week there was this boy, he was big. He was beating every-body, like a superman... but I fought him and beat him!”
These were words said in between some longer narrative, to which I was murmuring only mhmm, oh, while thinking of Cyprus from which I had just arrived, the friends left there, my apartment, and the new position the university was offering me. But now I was shaken awake. “There was even that new house with that blue roof. They have these two boys, twins. Ah, they can run really fast! That one, Ignatus—he can run. They are rabbits! And, they even go to that public school with many children... they are ants... they are all doves!”
A boy was a superman. Two boys are rabbits. Some schoolchildren are ants. Some adults are doves. These are not comparisons in the way I was used to, but associations. Benjamin, at only nine, did not have the ability to understand complex phenomena like violence, the absence of his older brother, marriage or things beyond his comprehension. So, he attempted to make sense of them through associations with thing she understood better—comics or animals (he owned an encyclopedia of animals that he treasured). This was why, when a boy bigger than him beat him, he could only explain this defeat as having fought with a “superman”. If kids can run so fast in the case of the twins, they must be “rabbits”. I knew at once that my younger brother’s childish babbling had opened a door that I had been banging at for many months. That night, I rewrote the entire novel, recasting the story of this fractured family through the lens of the youngest of four brothers, Benjamin, nine, who narrates the story by comparing everything to animals: “Father was an Eagle”; “Ikenna was a Python”; “Mother was a Falconer”; “Boja was Fungus”.
It was easier to make the choice on how to tell the story in the second novel. But later that year, I wrote a short story in which I faced a similar struggle. I had written it this time in the form it should be, but “The Strange Story of the World” lacked a narrative core. My father was visiting the US, and we were driving from Nebraska to Michigan. We had been in a debate about Christianity in Nigeria—my father defending the modern form, me arguing that it was corrupted and doing much harm. We stopped at a rest place and when we got back in the car, he wanted to change the subject. So, he began singing a song I hadn’t heard him sing in years, perhaps, in two decades. It was a song about hope being something that must be preserved. For some reason, this song—even though I hadn’t heard it in a long time—felt like the background music of my childhood, of my family story if it were to be made into a film. And as the cars stirred back to life, it occurred to me that the story of the family I was telling in the piece must revolve around a song.
We took a turn once this epiphany happened and I looked at my father, concluding his singing, and said to him, “Daddy, thank you for that!”
“What?” he said.
Years later, I began work on a new novel about the Biafran War of Independence. My mother was born in 1961, and only nine when the war ended. She knew that an uncle went to fight and never returned, and that one of her older brothers fought and survived. She knew about the hunger, the drills, the death she witnessed and heard about. At first, she wondered why that war, why was it a thing to be written about? She did not get it, I argued, plus it was too late. I had already finished what I believed was a complete draft.
We were sitting on the porch of her house in a town near Umuahia, and she was gazing at the sun shining through the palm trees, picking her teeth with a chewing stick. She sighed, looked at me and said, “OK, but there is something you should know about telling stories of wars.”
“What?” I said.
“Wars are meant to produce large-scale deaths,” she said in Igbo. “So, its primary subjects are often dead people, I fu go?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But, when stories of wars are told, they are told only by who? The living! Ha, but that is never complete. If the story of a war must be truly and fully told, it has to be told by both the living and the dead.”
My mother went quiet as my unwitting collaborators—my brother, father, and now mother—often did after unknowingly changing the shape of a project.
In the silence I could hear only bird cries. Two of them were floating just overhead on a thermal, the sun on their wings. I knew, watching them and with my mother’s words in my head, that the novel I had just finished would have to completely change.
Originally published on Esquire UK
Around 6:00 p.m. every day, groups of mostly South and Central American people gather outside the Row NYC hotel on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. When the hotel opened in 1928, The New York Times described the new building, then called the Lincoln, as “high class” and built in an “Italian” style. Much of that grandeur still exists on the outside, with its limestone and terra-cotta flourishes.
Today, the Row is a migrant shelter, and the people standing outside it are hoping to secure a room for the night. I pass by them most evenings when I walk from my office near Central Park to Penn Station. Donald Trump and his allies have called migrants like them “animals” who are “poisoning the blood” of America.
The people outside the Row are mostly multigenerational families: young parents, their small children, and often grandparents. The kids are usually in strollers, not a tablet in sight to distract them. The parents look desperate. They are the “huddled masses” described in the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, only a few miles away.
These men, women, and children are mostly not Americans—not yet at least—but there is something uniquely American about them. They are courageous, having left their homes and traveled thousands of miles in search of a better life for themselves and their children. During the Great Depression, when the crops failed and the factories shuttered, thousands of U.S. citizens packed up their families and moved to California in search of a better life for themselves and their children. They possessed “qualities of…courage and inventiveness and energy,” John Steinbeck wrote in Esquire. “If we had a national character and a national genius, these people, who were beginning to be called Okies, were it. With all the odds against them, their goodness and strength survived.”
A few blocks from where these migrants are seeking shelter, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden on 27 October. Many of the speakers that night directed their ire at these stateless people. Conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg said, “The fucking illegals, they get whatever they want, don’t they?” Stephen Miller, a former Trump adviser, said, “America is for Americans, and Americans only,” echoing a slogan from Nazi Germany. The former president did not denounce those statements. It was just another night in the 2024 presidential election, which has felt like an outer circle of hell, an eternal shitshow. On Election Day, the race is a tossup.
We know what Donald Trump will do, or try to do, if he wins the 2024 presidential election. He has told us: prosecute his political enemies, deploy the U.S. military against U.S. citizens, punish states run by Democrats, seal the border, round up the people outside the Row hotel and deport them. If he follows through, it would be unlike anything Americans have experienced.
This essay is not an endorsement of Kamala Harris. Rather, it is an attempt to answer this question: What happens to America if she loses?
When Donald Trump won in 2016, most of the country was shocked, including Donald Trump himself. Once the shock subsided, it looked to many of the people who didn’t vote for him that this was some terrible mistake. An aberration. Tired of sending the same people to Washington, D.C., voters cast the die for an outlier—they fucked around and found out. After four years, they voted him out, and he did everything possible to remain in power, including whipping up a mob to attack the Capitol Building. On the evening of January 6, 2021, senators from both parties denounced Trump, and it seemed this chapter in American history had come to a dark conclusion.
The pragmatic view of Trump’s return is that politics is cyclical. The arc of history doesn’t bend toward justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. once suggested. It is a seesaw that bounces between liberalism—it was only four years ago that people protested in the streets for the cause of social justice—and conservatism.
The other view of a second Trump presidency is that something has fundamentally changed in America. If Trump is elected again, it will not be a mistake. Voters have been confronted with Trump for the past eight years. They know exactly who he is. Instead, the election of Donald Trump will force everyone in this country to reconsider what we are as a nation.
What is America? Yes, it is a collection of states and territories bound together by a document, the Constitution. But more than anything else, America is an idea, a nation of men and women enshrined with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and Americans have an idea about themselves.
We are a nation that built cities and railroads, defeated the Nazis and the Soviet Union, fought for and won voting and civil rights for women and people of colour. Many of us or our ancestors traveled thousands of miles from our homes in other lands in search of a new life for ourselves and our children. Our faults as a nation are plenty. We butchered Indigenous people to take their land and build our cities and railroads; we exploited the labor of enslaved people; we dropped an atomic bomb on Japanese cities to end World War II and stockpiled nuclear weapons to beat the Soviets; we continue to marginalise people of colour.
But the prevailing idea is that we are a fundamentally decent people.
If Trump is elected to a second term, it will anger and sadden tens of millions. Many will feel that their lives and livelihood are threatened. Recently, I was speaking to the mother of a friend. She is an elderly Hispanic woman who fears Trump will deport her. She is an American citizen. As a straight, white male citizen of this country, I probably have the least to lose under a Trump administration, though I would fear for my two young daughters. If he is elected again, I believe our fundamental decency as a nation will erode. Telling thousands of people inside an arena that the huddled masses a few blocks away are inhuman will not be gross misbehaviour; it will become normal. It will become policy. It will become part of our national fabric.
A second Trump presidency will dramatically and, perhaps, permanently alter the idea of America. Maybe that’s exactly what America wants. When Esquire profiled former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon last year, he said to the writer, Chris Heath: “You’re a reasonable man in the middle….You’re a kindhearted person, you think both sides are wrong. It’s like Ecclesiastes. It’s just not your time. I hate to say it: It’s just not your time. It’s us versus them. They hate us and we hate them. One side’s going to win here. And it’s going to get ugly. It’s going to get messy.”
That line has haunted me since I read it, because what if Bannon is right? What if we do live in a different time, in which Americans can’t find common ground, in which they are not kindhearted people; instead, we are a nation that both detests migrants and hates our fellow citizens, a nation that punishes its political enemies and deploys the military upon everyone else? Maybe those among us who want America to be decent are in the minority. Maybe America has already changed, and our politics are only catching up. But that’s not the idea Americans have held up about themselves during my lifetime.
After I walk through the scrum of people outside the Row hotel, and past Madison Square Garden, I board a train and travel sixteen miles to my home in suburban New Jersey. In my village of about four thousand people, the voter rolls are split about 50/50 Republican and Democrat. Some houses are adorned with enormous Trump flags; others have small yard signs bearing the names of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. At parties and soccer games, we rarely talk national politics, even though it’s on everyone’s mind.
On Halloween night, I walked around our neighbourhood with my wife and kids and our friends and their kids. One of the women in our group wore a Kamala Harris T-shirt. As we strolled through the streets buzzing with children dressed as monsters and princesses and the emotions from Inside Out 2, we bumped into neighbours wearing Trump T-shirts and hats. The woman with the Harris shirt and one of the guys with a Trump hat are old friends. They talked about their kids and their jobs. They laughed about the last party they attended together and promised to get together soon at another party. There was none of the hatred Bannon described.
This gives me hope.
So do the people outside the Row hotel. “With all the odds against them,” Steinbeck wrote in Esquire, “their goodness and strength survived.”
