"Sleepless" Chapter 2 "Remember This Day"

Dublin, California is not a real place. Yes, it’s on a map. Yes, it has a police force. Yes, it has a city hall. But this does not make it an actual town.

Incorporated in 1982, the city of Dublin’s history is about as nonexistent as its essence.

The Bay Area by definition, is not quite limited to the the areas immediately surrounding the San Francisco Bay themselves.

The South Bay Area is home to the largest of its cities, San Jose, with well over 1 million people. It is joined by a supporting cast of smaller cities to its immediate West that from furthest South headed North goes haunted Los Gatos, sleepy Saratoga, quiet Cupertino with Santa Clara slightly East of there, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, then Palo Alto or “shallow Alto.” These cities are home to major Silicon Valley tech giants like Netflix, Google, Nvidia, and Apple. Just South of San Jose is Morgan Hill, and directly Northeast is Milpitas which rounds up Santa Clara County. Unless you’re in tech, real estate, or mixed martial arts, theres no real reason to be there other than the best pho you’ll find in the United States. This is the boring Bay Area.

To continue further to the Northwest of San Jose and directly North of Palo Alto is the home of Facebook, Menlo Park and the true beginning of what’s rarely called the “West Bay” and what’s more commonly known as “the Peninsula.” This narrow, wooded part of town includes the ever-underrated Redwood City, tucked away suburbs in the hills that are San Carlos, Belmont, and Hillsborough, the county seat of San Mateo, the cemetery city known as Colma, the industrial city called South San Francisco, the airport town called Millbrae, and the Pacific Coast communities of Daly City, Pacifica, and Half Moon Bay. This is old money Bay Area. This is in many ways, the throwback Bay Area. This the peaceful Bay Area.

Just North of Daly City and Pacifica is the traditional crown jewel of the Bay, the namesake city, San Francisco.

Across the Golden Gate Bridge is the North Bay. Marin County is the first county when crossing over from the city, which is home to “yacht type folk” in luxury retirement communities like Sausalito and Tiburon. With it comes the two wine counties in Napa and Sonoma. If you know anything about wine, you know Napa is more storied for its five star restaurants and founding of the Californian wine movement, but you also know that Sonoma County is home to prettier land and less tourism. If you’re a local, Sonoma is where you escape to. It is an other-worldly bastion of creative inspiration and potential mental and physical healing with a gateway to a seemingly more alien land in Mendocino County just due North. Rounding out these three finer counties is one of a nastier exterior in Solano County home to Vallejo and a Six Flags. Solano County is a bit of a wasteland, and Vallejo is a bit of a war zone. There is no reason to be there. This is the stranger Bay Area.

Across the Bay Bridge is the East Bay Area, and the defining city of this place is Oakland. This is a rougher Bay Area. This is the hippy Bay Area in Berkeley. This is the Black Panther Bay Area since 1966. This is the urban desert of West Oakland. This is the gang violence hub of Richmond. This is the “steal your car” city of Hayward. This is the sailor and cop town of Alameda. The East Bay is a nearly mystical place. Someone could steal your phone and key your vehicle, but you’d still love it somehow. It’s stranger than fiction. It cannot be explained. This is the raw Bay Area.

Inland from the East Bay however is a neck of the woods that some would consider a part of the Bay Area and some would consider something else entirely. From the foothills of Mount Diablo is the old town of Walnut Creek and the road headed South ends with a place called Pleasanton. East of Pleasanton is Livermore, and beyond that is the farmland void of the Central Valley. This stop gap land between blue water and corn fields known as the “Tri-Valley,” and there are some hidden gems in this place. Danville is a mountain town with a well-maintained local culture and charm that is untouched by the corporate world’s bleak minimalist philosophy of sanitizing standards and aesthetics. But then, there’s Dublin.

Dublin is the last stop on the blue line of the BART, and it’s the Northernmost end of Pleasanton, a town that was founded in the 1800s with an actual history. For some reason, that Northernmost end decided it would be better off on its own.

This has made it fall prey to globalism and consumerism.

There are no defining factors of Dublin other than its anti-culture. It has a Whole Foods, a Chipotle, a Panda Express, a McDonalds, a Dick’s Sporting Goods, a Home Goods, and any other household name you’re looking for.

This is the franchised America. This is the disease that is being exported across the pond.

There is no downtown. There is no community. There is no soul.

There is a sea of cookie cutter, suburban homes and clinical, sharp-edged apartment complexes that would make any sane man scream “dystopia!”

This is where I lived.

I lived here for two reasons.

Its safety was something I took note of for when Celine, my ex fiancé would inevitably visit, and it was home to one of the greatest Muay Thai gyms in the world.

Combat Sports Academy was making a name for itself with the army that its head coach Kyrian Fitzgibbons was so diligently assembling. After working for the United States government and in private security firms for two decades, Fitzgibbons decided to open up a Muay Thai gym in the middle of the 2009 recession. Since then, he’s created dozens of champions, in Muay Thai, kickboxing, and mixed martial arts.

In my mind, if I could spar with some of the best fighters in the world in a system as comprehensive at Fitzgibbons’, I would have a shot at being a world champion.

One Friday morning in Dublin bore a Muay Thai session followed by a Dutch kickboxing session and the daily “bag class,” that was simply a class on how to use a heavy bag.

Combat Sports Academy is a large warehouse of combat-based and crossfit-based suffering. This was something I resonated with, but I hadn’t yet rooted myself in their environment and ethos. The progressions had not yet set in.

A short walk brought me to my home in the next neighborhood over, and my separate entrance to the side of the house that I rarely departed from.

I was not in Dublin to make friends.

I was not in Dublin to socialize.

I was in Dublin for seclusion and focus, nothing more.

My side of the house had its own kitchen area that I outfitted with a backpacking stove in order not to have to cook in the main section of the house.

Leandro, the Afrikaner accountant raised in Sacramento lived in the other bedroom on my side of the house and was as elusive as I was, and this suited my preferences.

I did not want to be caught in a conversation that would see me be off-track. I wanted to have cooking take as little time as possible, and I wanted all other mundane tasks to be sprinted through for my mind to be free.

The mind had to be on combat and only combat. I would occasionally allow my mind to drift towards writing or my then fiancé, Celine. But the former was for late hours, and the latter was becoming a thorn in my side.

A quick cooking up of two slabs of red meat and a preparation of oatmeal with peanut butter and blueberries saw a proper re-fueling of the body and a settling of the spirit.

“I need to go deeper into this way again,” I thought.

“I don’t know what’s stopping from doing so.”

“I feel particularly sane, and not the settled kind of sane but the harrowing, complacent kind of sane.”

Opening up the blue light pod of an iPhone revealed a text message from Darren:

“I’m super hung over and got fucked on ketamine last night. The YMCA is closed for maintenance too, so no training for me today bud.”

This in my mind, would not stand. I had decided to train in Oakland with Darren in order to get him into shape, and I would not allow a line of discipline to slip. I had already begun to grow tired of his attitude in training that was laced with constant complaining and statements like, “this is such a stupid exercise.” Allowing one’s self to carry this kind of company often breeds a war of ethos, and more often than not, the lazier ethos wins. I would need to force the issue on him in any way possible to assert my ethos upon him, an ethos that I was trying to once again impose upon myself after it had been lost for years. Deception at this point in my life, was not something I was above.

I was studying combat, and at the end of the day, victory in combat is purely rooted in better decision-making.

Deception, inherently, is a part of effective decision-making in combat. The two can not be divorced.

This mindset combined with my then morally gray makeup and my needing to strengthen discipline of routine led to a con.

I proceeded to call Darren with an unusual, oozing level of charisma that I had possessed since birth but kept under wraps after it ruined my life in drama school.

“What’s up bud?!” I exclaimed.

“Oh you know, just dying,” he responded.

“Sweet, what time are you ready to go to the gym?” I asked.

“No, dude, I told you I’m not training today. I’m just going to go straight to work at seven.”

“Nonsense, you’ll feel much better at work after waking yourself up in the gym.”

“But the gym is closed dude.”

“Yeah, but Nina gave me guest passes to her gym in downtown.”

“The climbing gym?”

“Yeah, she said she’ll be able to let us in.”

Nina was a red-haired Ukrainian hipster chick with a hyper-feminist attitude and a clear inner confusion about her longing to be feminine being assaulted by an inner rage. Many a customer was enamored with her facial features, aloofness, gypsy fashion sense, and alleged enigma. There was no mystery about her for anyone who is capable of reading people, but this unfortunately, is the minority of men. Darren was another man to essentially fall in love with her at first sight, and his stalled pursuit of her was something I could leverage.

“Aw shit, um, okay, what time?”

“Three o’ clock brother.”

“Alright for sure, see you then.”

A quick and violent scrub of the dishes, a re-packing of my gym backpack, and a changing into a garb of burgundy button-up shirt, black jeans, and the black wide-brimmed hat I had bought on New Year’s Eve saw me ready to walk out the door and another mile to the West Dublin/Pleasanton BART station and catch a yellow line train to 19th Street Station in Oakland.

After emerging from the underground station of corners laced with trash, I walked a block North and a block West to arrive at the “Great Western Power Company,” a climbing gym with weightlifting equipment that was housed in an abandoned warehouse space for the now defunct, “Great Western Power Company.”

I waited for Darren at the turnstiles that were posted at the entrance, and he arrived with a dazed demeanor and a sudden, awakened surprise to see that Nina was not indeed there.

“Where’s Nina?”

“She couldn’t make it after all, but we can just buy day passes.”

“How much are day passes?”

“Let’s find out.”

Overhearing my conversation with the desk attendant that informed me that the day passes would be $25 each, Darren pulled me out of the gym for an impromptu meeting.

“Dude, what the fuck, I am not paying $25 to work out.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll pay for both of us.”

“Are you kidding?” You were just telling me that you need to save money!”

This was true. Celine was coming to visit in a month, and I had to stack as much cash as possible for the dates, food, and travel around the Bay that were to come in addition to building general savings while maintaining my high overhead of $3000 a month consisting of rent, food, transportation, insurance, therapy, and gym memberships. Still, this irresponsible spending was wholeheartedly justified in my mind for the sake of continuing to stoke the flames of a growing fire of discipline that I intended to evolve into a merciless inferno.

“Dude, whatever, we’re here, who cares?”

“No, I am not letting you spend this money, this is ridiculous.”

Darren’s typical naysayer attitude was beginning to infuriate me, as his dampening, “wet blanket,” speech was smothering my personal hype for the scheduled training session.

“I don’t fucking care. I want to work out. We’re literally blocks away from work, this is perfect.”

“Dude, this is so so stupid. Why don’t we just go to the YMCA in Berkeley?”

“Are you serious? Don’t you hate Berkeley?”

“Berkeley fucking sucks, but we are not spending this money. This is so fucking stupid.”

“Alright, fuck it, let’s go to Berkeley.”

Darren and I proceeded to walk up San Pablo Avenue six blocks to find his elusive parking spot that he couldn’t quite initially pinpoint while having a comedic exchange of animated speech.

“Wait hang on, what happened with Nina, why couldn’t she come?”

“Well uh, she never really knew about our little visit.”

“Wait she was never coming in the first place?”

“Well, uh. Well, no.”

“Wait, so you lied?”

“Yes.”

“Why the fuck would you lie to me?!”

“Because I knew it would get you out of bed to come to the gym.”

“Wait so you lied to get me out of bed where I was comfortable and in bliss, just so you could get me to go to the gym?!”

“Yes.”

“Why the fuck would do that just for me to work out?!”

“Because you can’t miss days and get results.”

“Dude are you…holy fucking…FUCK.”

I admittedly found his tantrum comedic. I didn’t really care that I had lied to get him out of bed. In my mind, I saved him from a day of mediocrity. If he decided to continue to be upset, I wouldn’t mind in the least. He had a knack for being upset, and when someone is upset frequently, it begins to lose meaning.

“I want you to remember this day,” he declared.

I burst out into laughter.

“I want you to remember this day!” I imitated and mocked.

“You want me to remember this day?” I questioned.

“Yes! Yes I do!” he retorted.

“Why?”

“Because this is the day you got me to get out of bed after I was fucked on ketamine and wanted to stay home, so you could go work out!”

“You’re welcome.”

Him and I both began to laugh. The absurdity of the situation from his standpoint was enough for him to find comedic relief within his psyche. He wasn’t the first friend I had pulled this on, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last.

After Darren engaged in some slamming of his skull on the wheel of his car in reaction to the traffic of his dearly never beloved Berkeley, we came upon a parking spot that seemed to be the one open space in the college town’s entirety.

The YMCA in Berkeley carried with it a cleanliness and openness that its counterpart in Oakland sorely lacked. The comparison between a college town of a top ten university and a gritty urban center isn’t one with surprising results when one stops to think for a split second.

Gritty cities build intensity within its citizens, no matter how weak any given individual is. Berkeley’s openness in terms of energy however, presents an opportunity for anyone who finds themselves there. With openness comes a blank canvas, and a blank canvas is something that can be made into just about anything one desires if he is diligent and specific with his focus. This is an excellent attribute for a center of higher learning. All voids are eventually filled.

After checking in, Darren and I came upon an empty dance studio on the YMCA’s second floor with its lights off, an abundance of fading twilight from large windows, an absence of strangers, and an unguarded auxiliary chord.

This was the chance I was looking for, the window of opportunity that was previously elusive, and the essence I had been chasing.

Training with Darren did not bear the kind of ethos I was accustomed to during my times of effective training. Comedic outbursts, lazy attitudes, and complaining fits were always antithetical with anything effective not only in training but life.

For the blank canvas was in front of me with the paint brush in my hand, and my ethos would be painted. This is the same ethos I forced Darren out of bed for.

I stepped over to the unattended auxiliary chord connected to the stereo apparatus that presented itself like some kind of fortress to play a song titled “Before and after Faith,” from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack for the Vietnam War documentary created by Ken Burns.

The song itself is over six minutes progressive build of industrial noise with two cataclysmic climaxes in its center. It’s beginning is somber, centered around a soft playing of a piano that concludes quickly and makes way for a weighted melody crafted from synthesizers that evokes the essence of militaristic discipline of repetition. The song is controlled chaos at its finest.

Darren and I began our warmups in the spacer and somber dance studio, and on Darren’s face was an expression I hadn’t seen on him before. He was focussed, sharp, and reaching a greater depth of seriousness within himself. He was beginning to understand if not, embody the ethos of effective training I was accustomed to: militaristic, swift, and aggressive.

“Finally, I have a training partner beginning to understand,” I thought.

This all came crashing down four minutes into warmup, when a middle aged Korean woman came in, turned on the lights, ruined the atmosphere, and informed us that no one was allowed in the studio outside of class times.

The progression was ruined.

Still, there was a different look in the eye of Darren that I had never seen before. There was a determination in his eyes to train with intensity, and this would not be ignored.

The training session itself was filled single arm kettlebell variations, barbell rows, weighted pull-ups, sled drags, and a nasty 4 round, 20 rep, barbell complex comprised of staggered stance deadlifts and other deadlift variations designed for athletic torture.

There was something awakening within Darren, and it was quite a sight to see. Perhaps everything he had been told about himself whether from the man in the mirror or from family was beginning to come into question. Consistent willpower has the capacity to erode all presets.

A Cus D’Amato quote came to mind:

“A boy comes to me with a spark of interest. I feed the spark and it becomes a flame. I feed the flame and it becomes a fire. I feed the fire and it becomes a roaring blaze.”

Darren was no boy. He was in fact, 25 years of age. He was particularly vocal about the fact that he was only invested in training for aesthetic reasons. Training like an athlete has aesthetic byproducts, and they were evident enough to appease his internal alarm against any potential belief that the training had primary ulterior motives. Ulterior motives were clear, but they remained behind the gate of the secondary. Still, Darren was beginning to subconsciously embody the deeper changes of effective training: changes in one’s being.

These initial changes were ones that were beginning to give way to hope for Darren in my mind. When I saw him go to the showers before myself who was adding extra rounds on the barbell complex, I saw a mind that may just have been beginning to understand the fruits of voluntary discomfort.

Eventually, our exit from Berkeley inevitably arrived, and a race to find parking in downtown Oakland ensued. The post-workout meal along the way was something hotly contested along the way, as I demanded we stop at Itani Ramen for a rice bowl packed with pork. Darren’s refusal to spend more than ten dollars on dining out kicked in, and a sorry state of entering a McDonald’s drive through for a surplus of chicken nuggets that hold more fat than protein.

The night ascended into a jovial ring of fire above the crowd, and to work in the mezzanine was to stand shoulder to shoulder with it.

There was nothing distinct about this night in the literal. Bartending a private party was nothing new. But in the visceral realm of understanding, this night was an energetic pinnacle for the establishment.

Kicking me onto my break saw me sit on a steel chair and brood, impatiently anticipating to be thrown back into the fray.

Darren walked into the break room to get ice and stopped in his tracks to exclaim, “ aw dude what happened?!”

“I know, I know, I know,” I responded.

“I need to get my break out of the way early, so I don’t miss the war,” I added.

“Then you better hurry back out there bud,” responded Darren joyfully.

It was the first shred of camaraderie I had known in the bar world in over a year, and it meant the world.

The night was concluded with closing procedures executed to the musical stylings of Nine Inch Nails, the Dillinger Escape Plan, and Bring Me the Horizon.

Inevitably, I refused to spend thirty dollars on an Uber to get back to Dublin and crashed on Darren’s floor.

But alas, I found myself waking up on his couch, having fallen asleep watching episodes of “Letterkenny.”

The light beaming on my face from the windows of his Victorian living room was the kind of light that told me I had overslept.

Scrambling to find my phone saw that it had died at some point during my slumber, and a more urgent scrambling to charge my phone and gain my footing occurred.

The “let there be light” moment was found on my phone, and the bitten apple emerged on its screen.

The time was 11:37am, and I had gotten the dreaded eight hours of sleep, three more than I have ever desired. An ocean of messages on “group me,” the chosen app of communication for our bar staff emerged on my screen with a slight delay as was the custom with older iPhones.

These messages were predominantly from Darren who proceeded to curse out the ownership and management of the bar staff who opted to fire him on the spot paired with a liberal statement regarding respect in the work place.

Darren emerged from his room with a crazed smile.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“I don’t care,” declared Darren.

This was not a brother. This was a liability.