An old leftist frenemy shaped my no-nonsense writing style

How did my no B.S. writing style emerge? It started back in August 1999, and a month before my top celebrity crush entered the world. 

For TC Trivia, my August 2025 celebrity crush is Song Yuqi — hilarious, considering I’m an unapologetic libertarian and she’s from Beijing. Anyway, let’s talk about that old frenemy of mine who probably has more in common with the CCP than he’d like to admit.

Oh yeah, TC’s stepping up the intensity here. Call it what you want, but since it’s a cool story in my evolution, it’s a tale that must be told.

A backstory for the ages

Me and this dude were both best friends with the third man in our clique, but he and I were, at most, tolerant of one another.

This kid was that “surprise baby,” born a while after his older siblings, was spoiled as hell, scared of everything, and so uncoordinated he once found a way to hit himself in the face with a golf ball at a driving range.

Oh, and he loved to remind people of their past mistakes and who they were as opposed to who they are now. If he stuck a claim on any issue, he always felt so impassioned about it that he’d flip at the slightest pushback.

The type of kid who, if you had a counter for his claims, would just talk over you to the point he’d start shouting the more you pushed back.

Honestly, I’ve never met anyone like him in my life. And to be real, even people I’ve met and didn’t care for in recent years haven’t even come close.

Why this is even relevant today

So, after, I’d say, our second year of college, back in 2011, I lost most contact with this guy. Following the 2013 golf ball incident, I don’t think I spoke to him again since, so it’d been 12 long years.

I don’t have social media these days unless you count Substack, so I have no reason whatsoever to seek him out. Or, I didn’t have a reason.

I’d see him every now and again when we were both in the neighborhood, me visiting my parents and him visiting his. Our best friend lives in that neighborhood as I write this, so I asked if he’d seen this old frenemy at all.

His answer was only when the kid had his back turned and headed into his parents’ place. Once in a while I’d spot him in his parents’ driveway. I’d wave, and he’d just stare. Classic.

Then came this past year’s Fourth of July picnic.

Catching up for four hours in a swimming pool

So, our mutual friend was at my parents’ place for the Fourth of July hangout, and we ended up in the pool for a good four hours catching up on everything. Out of curiosity, I just asked, “Have you seen much of (frenemy’s name) lately.”

That’s when he told me that his frenemy, who I knew was a major leftist to begin with, had gotten so political, one couldn’t even have a conversation with him for more than a few minutes before he injected politics into the equation.

The sources? Other mutual friends and people we’ve known over the years. My friend here had kept in contact with them a hell of a lot better than I had.

It was never about the politics

This guy’s always clung to establishment dogma. He lives in a deep-blue bubble, works in a leftist echo chamber, and treats dissent like heresy.

In other words, you can’t talk about the weather without him unleashing a verbal manifesto on climate policy.

Now, don’t think for a second that I see this guy as an enemy. I don’t. Hell, I’ve met plenty of fine people on the political left who truly believe that they’re justified in their coercive viewpoints if they can claim “moral high ground.”

I’ll never agree with it, but I’m sure they reached that conclusion based on the kind of material they’ve gotten their hands on and researched. And maybe they just never heard of Mises, Rothbard, the works. Or, if they did, perhaps they didn’t look deeply enough. I don’t know.

Politics isn’t the problem. The problem is that, since childhood, you could never have a good-faith debate with him — and now, in our mid-thirties, he’s even worse.

The mainstream leftist today who influenced my writing style yesterday

If you regularly read this author blog, you’ll know a few things. One, I’m EXTREMELY unapologetic in my own right, but not one who’s gonna shout someone down who disagrees with me.

Mock? Yeah, I’ll do that. Disrupt? Absolutely. Be a pest? You bet. And most importantly, play the role of a fourth-line winger in the liberty movement? Without hesitation.

Ironically, if it wasn’t for this frenemy, you wouldn’t have this hardcore, no-B.S. writing style that I’ll assume that you love. And you also know the drill: As a fiction author, you can bet your ass that I have characters in a lot of my works who this guy helped inspire.

Actually, in my young adult libertarian fantasy prequel, Arcane Awakenings, there’s a character in Jett Diamondback’s “mean girls” clique who I based this cat on. She’s fearless when picking on our protagonist, Yote Diamondback, but the second anyone challenges her, she crumbles.

So, be sure to grab your copy of Arcane Awakenings and meet her.