There’s a lot riding on this essay, in my book. I’ve thrown the term kvetch around enough that it’s become a calling card. I better do it justice.
I know it confuses people when I use Yiddish. It clashes with how I look, especially now that I’ve lightened my hair. I’ve seen people get visibly annoyed. Some have tried to call me out, not realizing that I grew up with these terms. My mother is a New York Jew. Yiddish was always part of her vernacular. Oy vey, oy gevalt, meshuggah. These were thrown around my house constantly. And fittingly, my mother was the first one who christened me a kvetch.
“Quit your kvetching,” she would always say.
I did complain a lot. I still do. I’m a classic middle child. Something is always unfair. These days I try to complain in a more balanced way, but even I hear myself going on sometimes and roll my eyes. So negative. What a kvetch.
That’s really what I’m trying try to do with the term. I use it to take myself less seriously. But in the process, I’ve learned to take the idea of kvetching more seriously. When I use kvetch, it is a different verb from say complain, or even worse, whine. Whiny and spoiled were also staple terms of my upbringing. I was afraid of those labels. There’s no good way to spin them. But kvetch, like a lot of Yiddish, is fun. The word has character. When my mom told me to quit my kvetching, it was usually in a playful context. I don’t remember kvetch used during serious arguments. That was the realm of spoiled and whiny.
I’ve used kvetching several times as a rebuttal to all the pseudo-positive rhetoric that has taken hold in America. This has been especially necessary in Los Angeles, as Los Angeles is the capital of pseudo-positivity. If you say something negative in public, people will correct you. Some of them seem to mean well, but like most of the advice givers (advice giving and pseudo-positivity usually overlap), I hear so much frustration, and often outright anger. I hear people trying to control others because they lack control in areas of their own life. But that’s my bias, of course. After all, I am a nitpicky little kvetch.
I want to tread carefully here. I know so many good people who are proponents of concepts like Law of Attraction and manifestation. I don’t want to shame these people or tell them that their beliefs are wrong. The issue for me is when people assume that their belief system is right for everyone and demand conversion. I hear echoes of my Christian upbringing. Don’t say that. Don’t think like that. You don’t want to upset the universe. It’s listening. Always listening. You must believe. Or else.
I touched upon self-deprecation in my essay “On Humor.” It seems more accepted on the East Coast. On the West Coast, it outright triggers people. I was at a wrap party for a film and a woman asked me what my role was. I told her that I was one of the actors. She asked me if I was a good actor. I thought that was a ridiculous question. So, of course, I made a joke.
“Eh, I’m okay,” I shrugged. But I was smiling.
The woman did not smile.
“Don’t say that,” she said. “You have to affirm yourself.”
“It’s just a joke,” I said.
“It’s not a good joke,” she responded.
“It’s just self-deprecation,” I said. “It’s my style of humor.”
She leaned forward, a look of righteous pity in her eyes, and put her hand on my arm.
“I hope you develop a more positive perspective soon,” she said, before she walked away.
And this is why I’m tired of LA.
Call me a kvetch, but I thought the whole display was gross. The interaction reminded me of when Christians tell nonbelievers “Well, God believes in you.” In those instances, it’s hard to tell where condescension ends, and good intentions begin. Something tells me that the former dominates.
Sometimes when people tell me to be more positive, I like to joke that they’re being anti-Semitic, that they’re suppressing a sacred tradition. I am a Jew, and I must kvetch. It’s not just my birthright, it’s my duty. My great-grandfather fled Poland and came to America so that I could one day live to kvetch as my ancestors did before me. And I do get a sick little thrill from watching confusion play out on the faces of the pseudo-positive, self-proclaimed progressives. Must make him be less negative, must not colonize other cultures, must remind him that he is privileged white man, must acknowledge that Holocaust is bad, must, must…error, error.
But I am a liberal, and I remind myself of this when I kvetch about liberal behavior that I find problematic. It’s the same thing that Bill Maher constantly points out. There is a difference. It’s not a choice between two different flavors you don’t like, at least not anymore, not with the rise of the radicalized right and literal neo-Nazis. Neo-Nazis are a real trigger for me, if that wasn’t obvious by now. But we liberals can be oh-so-condescending, and therefore Democrats are struggling to connect with groups that would be much better off voting Democrat. We see this with low-income white people, but it’s also at play with people of color who are more religious or who are simply alienated by edicts like the use of “Latinx.” I have only encountered one Latinx person who said that they were fine being called that, and they were of a wealthier background than the other Latino/Latina/Latinx (whatever I should be saying) people who worked with me. The Latinos/Latinas I met at work were adamant. Don’t call me that. The consensus I heard is that some try-hard white person must have made up the term. I don’t know the origin of Latinx, but the larger point I’m trying to make is that we must find a better way to promote ideals of tolerance and progress without being so damn uptight. That plays into the hands of those who want to rally lower income people into voting against their interests. This is also why I do not believe in censoring comedians. This is why I believe Dave Chappelle’s recent special is more complicated than critics want to believe. And I believe this is also why said critics skim over the last twenty minutes involving what Dave Chappelle learned from his friend Daphne, a trans woman.
The original thesis of this essay was going to distinguish kvetching as a type of complaining used for good, say in situations where something is wrong, and someone must speak up. By this definition, Bernie Sanders might be our most famous kvetch. He’s been spouting the same rhetoric for decades about wealth concentrating and wages stagnating. What a broken record. But here’s the thing: he’s not wrong. And if anything, he’s been proven more correct as the years go by and a second Gilded Age ensconces itself.
I’m the Bernie Sanders in most of my friend groups. I also spout the same rhetoric. Look how easily I get lost in these essays when the topic of class divides comes up. Once I get going, it’s hard to stop. Everything leads back to wealth inequality somehow. And it does annoy people. And like with complaining in general, sometimes I annoy myself. Enough already, Boz. Quit your pseudo-intellectual kvetching.
It’s funny, though. The pseudo-positivity I encounter in Los Angeles overlaps with self-proclaimed progressivism, but you can’t spur progress by talking about how great everything already is. You spur progress by identifying issues that need to be resolved. So, it would seem, you can’t have progress without kvetching.
So, quit your kvetching about kvetching.
Of course, I don’t always kvetch for good. Sometimes I kvetch for the fun of it. Sometimes I kvetch when I’m just having a bad day. And even when I do kvetch on social issues, it’s easy to discern elements of self-interest. If I had used my college degree to get a decent job with a good salary and benefits, would I care as much about wealth inequality? How much of my haranguing is just longwinded justification for my own lack of status, a status that I undercut by going into the arts?
I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t have access to the other timelines for comparison. But the issue of wealth inequality looms regardless of my motives, and there is still so much to kvetch about. And this kind of kvetching has grown more mainstream, especially as cost of living has increased and degrees have been devalued. It’s not just those in the arts who are struggling anymore. I’ve met several people in restaurants who left full time jobs, jobs that required degrees, because they could make more with tips. It’s frightening. Two of my sisters have a degree in psychology and architecture respectively. The former has a masters. The salaries my sisters graduated into were comparable to what I made as a food runner at a fancy restaurant. Even worse, my sisters were making about twenty grand less than the servers I worked under. Oy vey.
But here I go again on one of my tangents. This is an essay about kvetching, not wealth inequality. I suppose I’ve made the connection that I wanted to. It’s the same point I slipped into my essay “On Humor.” Sometimes complaining, excuse me, kvetching, is necessary because there are systemic problems larger than any individual attitude. The pseudo-positives have had plenty of time to manifest equality. They were supposed to put it on their vision boards ages ago. What’s the hold-up?
I kvetch, but I don’t have answers myself. That’s what really bothers me. I have vague ideas about how to fix things: provide a government option for healthcare, make tuition at public universities more affordable, force businesses to pay real wages, cancel student debt, automate jobs that are not healthy for humans, provide some sort of universal basic income, all sorts of fun reformative ideas. But what do I know? I can barely get my own life going. At one point I thought that I would work in politics. That’s how I was planning to effect change. But I realized during college that I was not suited for the field, nor did I want to center my life around it. I wanted to make compelling works of art; don’t cha know. These compelling works of art would inspire social change, don’t cha know. I would get to do interviews and offer my opinions on all sorts of things. People everywhere would think I was a real smart cookie. Also, somewhere along the way I’d get rich and famous. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I could have the world fixed by dinnertime if I really hustled.
I’ve always loved critiquing systems. In every other school essay, I shoehorned some comment about society. I was always looking for big ideas. It’s not the worst way to be, but it can be exhausting. And as I said earlier, I do worry about my biases. Even now, looking back at my list in the previous paragraph, it seems like I’m just parroting a hodgepodge of liberal talking points. Anyone can do that. Shouldn’t I put my money where my mouth is kvetching? If I know so much, shouldn’t I go out there and fix something?
I am embarrassed by how many protests I haven’t attended, by how many volunteer events I haven’t been involved with, by how many local elections I haven’t voted in. Growing up, I thought that I would be such an activist. I imagined myself giving impassioned speeches on every issue, leading the charge. I would hate for little Boz to know how difficult it can be to leave your house as an adult, how tired you can be just from working a job and keeping up with errands. Of course, little Boz would be appalled by me in a myriad of ways. I used to be a good Christian/Republican. I was a die-hard Creationist. Now I’m a liberal-agnostic Golden Jew. I indulge in the Devil’s Lettuce on a regular basis. I swear. And worst of all, I turned away from a practical career and became one of those starving artist types. It’s all very blasphemous. I suppose I should write about my transition out of Christianity at some point. It was a tough one. Necessary, but tough.
I have noticed a change in the past year, though, with my kvetching. Sometimes I’ll go on my rants, and people who used to snap at me laugh and say that I should try stand-up. I think at some point I absorbed the rhythms of comedians I admire, and now I slip into those rhythms without trying to. I just wrote a 6,000-word essay on humor, so I probably shouldn’t go on too long about it here, but it does seem worth repeating that we need people in our society who can bridge ideological gaps and speak with candor. Bill Maher is another kvetch who I enjoy. He’s a longtime Democrat and atheist, but my conservative-to-the-core father has sent me several clips from his show. People who obtain middle ground appeal fascinate me. I may no longer want to work for the State Department, but it seems I still have some interest in being an ambassador. It’s hard to reference polarization without sounding trite at this point, but the state of our union does frighten me. I think I will always lean more liberal, but there is behavior on both sides of the spectrum that makes me worry. Censorship frightens me. The whole point of defecting to the liberal side was to find a freedom that I didn’t grow up with. But it seems that there are many pseudo-progressive ways to shut down conversation. I’m biased because people love to check my privilege, and I certainly have plenty of it, but it’s getting harder to distinguish between systemic critiques and ad hominem attacks. Statements such as “so-and-so of this identity could never understand…” seem more counterproductive than anything else. If we assume that people can never understand identities apart from their own, then how do we have dialogue? How do we find compromise in a society that many different groups must share?
Personally, I write to make sense of things. I use creative work. It is hard to write other races, genders, and sexualities, but doing so forces my brain to explore the edges of what I can and cannot understand. It’s a similar sensation to learning a foreign language. When I lived in Costa Rica for a summer, I spoke Spanish every day, as not many people spoke English in the city where my internship was located. At night, I could feel my brain throbbing, trying to adapt and make new connections. I get a similar feeling when I write out of my comfort zone.
Kvetching can bridge gaps, I believe. I have enjoyed testing the waters with Uber drivers and service workers of all different backgrounds. We have many of the same complaints. I think this is one reason that I am so obsessed with wealth inequality. It is a near-universal problem. And since the pandemic, the air is charged. If I start to kvetch, there are many people who will kvetch with me, and all of them are people whose lives I could never understand firsthand.
“Things have changed, haven’t they?” I asked the Latina cashier at Whole Foods.
In my defense, she started the kvetching. At Whole Foods they always ask you if you have Amazon Prime when you check out. I told her no and made some joke about not being one of the cool kids. She said that she didn’t have it either. Employees at Whole Foods don’t get any kind of discount, apparently. We started roasting Amazon for being cheap at the company’s own checkout line. We were not speaking loudly, but we were not quiet either. As a kvetch connoisseur, I found the whole thing delicious.
“It seems like we’re all willing to put up with less,” I continued.
She gave me a conspiratorial smile and nodded. I told her what I saw happening at both of my workplaces. The atmosphere of The Great Resignation had become apparent. People were sick of pretending that they wanted to work just for the sake of working. We complained on the floor in front of managers about the state of modern labor. The cashier told me some stories of her own about Whole Foods. She and I were not being positive. We were not looking on the bright side. We were not affirming ourselves or the company. We were not checking our own privilege, saying how lucky we were to have jobs at all, to live in a first-world nation with all its associated advantages. We did not engage in any of that pseudo-positive, self-proclaimed progressive mess.
We kvetched, that’s what we did. We kvetched. A short Latina woman and a lanky Golden Jew. What an odd couple. Dios Mio. Oy vey. It made no sense. We did not match. I could never understand what it’s like to be this young Latina woman with my white male gaze. To even think such a thing could lead me to the Dark Side. I could lose myself as a liberal Jedi and become one of those Sith lords: the Entitled White Men.
I have no idea what’s it like to be a Latina woman, but I know shitty jobs, and I know a kvetch when I see one. And that means I share at least two tribes with this woman.
I have a personal theory about tribalism. We all contain multitudes, those multitudes can be visualized as tribes, and these tribes can be centered around everything from a shared interest to a shared race. If we can organize our own tribes into a confederacy, then we can do the same with the tribes outside of us as well. I think this is the driving force behind the debate about representation. We must share the stage and promise each tribe that they will get the turn to tell their myths, but we must also acknowledge how difficult that endeavor will be and offer each other patience. There are so many tribes, and there is so little time. But also, there are more ways to combine and showcase tribes than ever. Some tribes crisscross the globe, like Jews.
“You always find some way to make it about you,” an old roommate loved to tease me. He had the same toothy smirk every time.
Yeah, well, that’s just like, your opinion, man. Man, not mensch. Cause you suck.
Ohhhhhhh…
Tell me how I grew up in a historically black county and still turned out this white. Oy vanilla.
Anyway, I am a huge believer in the structural study of myth. I’m a fanboy for Carl Jung and Claude Levi-Strauss. Call me hipster, I don’t care. I like LCD Soundsystem too. Sue me. The stories we tell ourselves as a culture determine what kind of culture we can be, and whether we can evolve for the better as a species. That’s why I think it’s important for children to learn myths from many cultures while growing up. That’s why I think it’s dangerous when religions call knowledge outside of their belief system forbidden and exile those who take of it from the garden. That is why I do not think we should censor comedy shows.
Here’s how I think we should handle Dave Chappelle. Have all the tribes he’s offended confront him in a Comedy Central style of roast, but especially invite trans comics. Fight comedy with comedy. I’d watch the shit out of that. I bet you would too. It’s something every tribe will want to watch at the same time, and by default, we will have to come together. This will encourage us to stay peaceful. And Dave Chappelle is a good sport. I bet he would love being roasted by trans people. That way they would be speaking in the same language, and that way they could finally work things out. They could negotiate a peace. That’s why Dave Chappelle loved Daphne so much. That’s why she was the last twenty minutes of his last special. She was a trans woman who reached out to Dave through comedy, and since they spoke the same language, they could understand each other. That’s what I think he’s been trying to say. Dave Chappelle is part of the comedy tribe, and to censor a member of the comedy tribe is a great dishonor because the function of the comedy tribe in our society is to navigate uncomfortable contradictions. Censorship is sacrilege. Comedians must explore where the sacred meets the profane, and that’s not always pretty work, but it’s necessary to hold our culture accountable.
I think all this might also relate to the accusation that Jews control the media. I touch on this briefly in my essay “On Humor” but tricksters and shapeshifters are part of so many myths around the world. They are intermediary types that can reveal truth. In that sense, I think anti-Semitism is a dark inversion of the trickster character. In this inversion, the mercurial nature of Jews throughout history marks them as shapeshifters, and those in charge do not like shapeshifters. Shapeshifters threaten binaries, and binaries are necessary to maintain empires, to divide society into those ruling and those who are ruled. But, here’s the thing, liberals don’t trust these shapeshifters either. That’s why you see such a tension around the discussion of anti-Semitism and including Jews in activism. There’s an obvious prejudice against Jews, but not one with a clear explanation. To Whoopi Goldberg, the Holocaust was just about white people picking on other white people. To conspiracy theorists, many of whom have been elected to Congress (see Marjorie Taylor Green), Jews are a set of supernatural puppet masters who must be stopped at all costs.
And I do think Jews are shapeshifters. Are we a race, or are we a religion? Do we own everything, or have we been cast out? Are we white, or are we kike?
Side note: at this point I imagine some Hypothetical Outraged Reader reminding me that not all Jews are white, but I think that’s part of my point. I think that’s why we all need to acknowledge our many tribes. That’s what intersectionality means to me. It is a way of reminding myself at crucial moments that we are all very similar, and we are all very different. This kind of thinking forces me to acknowledge my own contradictions. That’s what being a Golden Jew is all about.
I know it confuses people when I talk about anti-Semitism. I’ve seen many people get visibly annoyed or just plain confused. It’s the same way they react to my Yiddish. Many have tried to call me out. I know that I look like a country club who wished to become a real boy. But that’s why I need the violent examples, as much as I know how they will make people uncomfortable, myself included. I need people to know that I understand the stakes. I need them to know that if nothing else, I understand that fear. They turned on me. They let me be white for years and then overnight they decided that I was less than human, just like my family feared that they would. That’s why my parents told us not to tell anyone we were Jewish when we moved to that county. They cornered me in the locker room, wrapped duct tape around my neck, and called me their pet. Some of these same kids, especially the ringleader, would also wrap their hands around my neck throughout the years and squeeze.
I can’t forget any of it, that’s why I keep bringing it up. The fear is still so strong, even after all this time. If I lose my grip, I’ll slip right back there. I can see that grimy locker room. I can smell the stale air. I can feel the sensation of something encircling my neck; first tape, then hands.
Kike.
The last Uber driver I kvetched with was angrier than me about the whole mess. Wealth inequality that is, not that whole tangent which began on the structural study of myth and ended up, yet again, on anti-Semitism.
“You always find some way to make it about you…”
Yeah, well, you forced me to front you rent money for years. So, deal with it, echo of former roommate. Deal with it.
Anyway, I don’t know how the topic came up during that Uber ride, but I made some comment about wealth inequality and that set the driver off. He started yelling in an oratorical fashion, the trained voice of a performer. It was a sermon type of yelling that I remember from my church days. I did get nervous, scared skinny white boy that I am, especially because I was high, but he kept turning around to clarify that he wasn’t yelling at me. When he did this, his tone would change. I could see and hear him code-switching in real time. He looked at me to break the fourth wall, then he turned back to yell at the hypothetical oppressor in front of the steering wheel. But when he yelled at this hypothetical oppressor, he didn’t just yell, he thundered. It was captivating. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck. He must have had theater experience, especially with those Shakespearean asides of his. Or maybe I’m just looking for another shared tribe to check off on my clipboard. But if I had to bet money, I would bet that he was also a member of my Tribe A. I know a kvetch when I see one. I also know when I see a damaged male artist.
We were in his Tesla. I don’t own a car. He was black, and I am oh-so-white. I have no idea about his life outside of that Uber ride. I don’t think I gave him many details about mine. Mostly we talked about wages, debt, and how broken things felt in America. A black Uber driver and a carless Golden Jew. What an odd couple. We didn’t match. It didn’t make sense. But still, we were able to get mad together. We could share that dish, and in terms of tribes, we at least shared the distinction of being in Tribe Kvetch.
But like I said, I also know a damaged male artist when I see one.
“It’s been a pleasure speaking with you,” he said when he dropped me off, converting back to a smooth, even tone. It’s a tone that I have cultivated myself in customer service. The way this driver turned around and looked me in the eye, there was something conspiratorial about it, the same kind of conspiratorial displayed in the smile of the woman at Whole Foods.
But maybe this white boy imagined it all. I was high, after all. And I am a liberal white person. We white liberals are always trying to mitigate our whiteness. We’re always hoping that the minorities will label us one of the good Caucasians. I know I want that. Why? Because I want to be good, that’s why. I want validation from everyone. I’m an Equal Opportunity Void. Prioritizing validation from minorities is just my version of Affirmative Action. Also, I made a vow to never abuse others in the ways that I had been abused, to not make excuses. I come from a long line of angry men. Anger is part of my inheritance. I am trying to remember how anger has been used to hurt me so that I can avoid that and spend my anger wisely. I am trying to spend my anger on art instead of hurting. That way I can tame myself and join all those civilized folk in the Promised Land. That’s what being a Golden Jew is all about. I am trying to unite the tribes within me so that I can be at peace, inside and out. But to do that, I must tell my stories, and I must be honest when I tell them. I must tell the good, the bad, and the kvetch-y.
The worst thing is that I keep referencing the structural study of myth, and I think I might be doing it wrong. I still only half-understand it. My thesis in college was a mess. There were some cool ideas, but it was just all over the place. My favorite professor, Professor Frederick Damon, called it a “necessary failure that all good and creative people must experience.” That was more than fair. Like I said, the thing was a mess. My reach really exceeded my grasp on that one. I can’t look at it now. The typos alone make me cringe.
Back to present day. I keep having covert dialogues in all sorts of customer service situations. I bait the workers with questions, and they give me the tea. I love the tea. I try to be upfront about this. I have some of the gossip tribe in me. And I can have these dialogues with the workers because I have been there with them. There are so many things I can’t understand about their lives, but I know the shame of poverty and underemployment. I know the despair and rage that comes with being a servant for the upper class. At my last two restaurants, many of the wealthier customers wouldn’t talk to me at all. They wouldn’t look me in the eye. They just flat-out ignored me. Servers are meant to be seen and not heard; don’t cha know.
But things have changed, haven’t they? Aren’t we all willing to put up with less?
I hope so. And hope is the key word. My mother didn’t use kvetching for serious arguments, and I don’t kvetch at times of defeat. I kvetch because I still believe that things can change. It’s my call to rally the tribes. We must kvetch together if we are to come together. Put it on a hat and outsell the MAGA caps. There’s a new Tea Party in town, and it’s all about gossip. That way, we can’t even consider hating the gays.
Kvetch2024. I’m calling it.
Don’t look at me, though. There’s a reason I sidestepped politics. I just want to work on my projects full time and for decent pay. Okay, fine, I want a lot more than that, but let’s start there. It would be nice to get insurance, too. Medi-cal has been good to me, but it can only do so much. Of course, the insurance industry these days is basically one giant legal scam. So…
It’s the end of the essay, Boz. Quit your kvetching.