The Ballad Of Bobby LaRocca

Why “men should be more vulnerable” doesn’t quite encapsulate the mid-life male friendship experience.

Before we begin here, I’ll say upfront that I can be a shitty friend, I can be a lot as a person, and I’ve definitely gone through some bouts of depression and generalized malaise and functional addiction over my days. I’ve probably lost more friends than I’ve gained. Actually, that might not be true, because I basically had to reinvent myself after mid-2017, and I’m still here and usually have plans on a weekend. So, go me.

Bobby LaRocca was a kid I went to college with. He’s up in the Beantown area. Very nice dude. I once saw him jump into a lake in western New York fully naked. It was a true sight to behold. His compact and muscular form intrigued many men on this trip, so we asked him how he got jacked. He said, simply, “I looked up some workouts on The New York Times.”

Blessed.

All the years around COVID blend together generally, but I think sometime in 2021, I was drinking a decent amount day-side and I was generally pretty off-task and questioning my role in life. 2021 was the first year I figured out about male infertility, so that was hard. I made like $180,000+ that year despite working maybe three hours/day, so I think I was kinda disillusioned with white-collar and how pointless it can feel. I was newly-married, and felt like I was losing a lot of friends from different walks of life. So, I had good moments but also some bad ones. That’s important to remember within this story.

I didn’t actually write this article until November of 2022, but I had been thinking about it for years.

Basically, we have this narrative that men should be “empathetic!” and “vulnerable!” and all this shit. But when you actually do that with other guys, most of the time they cannot handle it and they run away from you.