Gut Instinct: Staring At the (Capri) Sun

I wish I had a job I could explain in a single sentence, such as “I’m a construction worker” or “I dress like a cop and lap-dance ladies at bachelorette parties.” Sadly, my arm muscles are as weak as my grind-dancing skills. I’m a writer, a profession treated with the skepticism associated with politicians’ promises.

“What type of writer?” people ask, arching their eyebrows. It’s understandable. In the right, wrinkle-hiding light, I can still pass for a tender-faced temp answering phones for a Midtown firm. Hello, this is MKTG. How can I help you? “I’m a food and drink journalist,” I answer, knowing where this conversation is headed. “You’re so lucky to get paid to eat and drink,” they reply. “But who do you write for?”

I grit my teeth, grinding them into Kool-Aid powder. I hate this question as much as I do sardines and salmon. Prove yourself, people are saying. Dutifully, I rattle off publications that have contained my bylines. It’s a long list, long enough to make my mother proud. I’ve been in New York for nearly a decade, and I’ve scavenged paychecks from most entities in town that put ink to paper, pixels to computer screen. It’s not bragging; it’s survival.

Then comes the inevitable follow-up. “So, do you blog?” This question causes my shoulders to tense like steel beams. I have a blog (My Gut Instinct, duh), but it’s bare bones. I only post links to published stories, appealing to my parents’ pals and perverts searching for “fingering drunk friend,” “dry-humping inanimate objects, “man plastic baby pants” and “mild bacne,” to name a couple recent queries. I don’t know if this speaks more to the miscreants crawling across the Internet, or the fact that I wrote content that landed ne’er-do-wells at my blog.

In its current incarnation, my blog is barely a placeholder. This causes an internal conflict. Every month welcomes another blog gone from concept to inception to six-figure book deal. This Is Why You’re Fat. Julie and Julia. Fancy Fast Food. They’re bald-faced gimmicks, but America likes gimmicks. Gimmicks get you paid. Make it rain dollar, dollar bills, y’all.

It may sound like I’m as bitter as a Green Flash West Coast IPA. That’s not the case. I’m blessed to pay my bills by recounting a liver-pummeling at Midtown’s Russian Vodka Room (try the horseradish vodka; $3.50 for a double shot till 7 p.m.!) and a stomach-stuffing at Chinatown’s A-Wah, where the mushroom-crowned rice casserole is crispy, steamy bliss. But lately, I’ve been thinking how nice it’d be to sell out and buy a breezy Rockaway Beach bungalow.

“Let’s do it,” my girlfriend says, interrupting this tale. “You can wear your swimming trunks all day, every day—even the flesh-colored ones.” I love my low-cut, flesh-colored trunks. They seemingly blend into the sand, like beach camouflage. This makes me happy, and frightens people, which makes me even happier.

To set this chain of pants-less events into motion, I’ll need a buzz-worthy food blog. It must be visually appealing and, ideally, crowd-sourced. Why worry about content creation when strangers can do it for me? I’m a 21st-century social-media mogul! So what should my blog cover? Dive bars? Dumplings? Wait, I have it: Staring at the (Capri) Sun.

Let me explain how this will make me rich beyond compare or, hopefully, a bicycle-delivery man. At least twice daily, I stroll our dog, Sammy, around my Brooklyn neighborhood. Sammy’s bowels have made me intimate with Crown Heights’ sidewalks and trees, and the litter clogging them. Before I owned our mutt, I could ignore the chip bags stuck in trees like colorful leaves. But now, as Sammy urinates on fire hydrants, I have two choices: examine my dog’s appendage or stare at trash. Wisely, I’ve chosen garbage.

Thus, over the last six months, I’ve become an expert in beverage rubbish. It can be classified into three categories: malt liquor, iced tea and Capri Sun, the foil packets as flat as Prosperity Dumpling’s sesame pancake. Their commonality is cost. Most run less than a buck, explaining their ubiquity. But what explains litterbugs’ originality?

I’ve discovered cans impaled on car antennas, stuck to trees with gum and stacked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s irresponsibility as art. Staring at the (Capri) Sun will visually chronicle the dirty, lazy lengths to which people will go to avoid a trashcan. Think humor, not preaching. No one wants to be tsk-tsked. But they do want a cheap laugh to distract them from daily drudgery.

Does this idea have the legs to keep me in flesh-colored shorts forever?

Or would I be better off staring at my dog’s member instead?

What food blogs get you salivating? Tell me at [jbernstein@nypress.com](mailto:jbernstein@nypress.com).