Leather Jackets
In summer.
Ninety degrees. High humidity. Why was that guy wearing a black leather jacket, anyway? A speculation follows.
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HEAVY ROTATION
Andrew wrote a song called “Capricious Billionaire” that went all around the world, fast. He knew none, obviously. He had read about them all, every day, to fullness and far past it, and then in an airport coming home from his sister’s engagement party he found himself standing no more than five feet away from one of the biggest of the bigs, a tech guy, health care too, real estate up and down both coasts, a burgeoning media empire, a daughter who was a pop star, another daughter who was positioning herself to take the company aggressively into AI, a second wife, a third. This guy was by himself in the snacks section of a newsstand, flicking the corner of a bag of Hot Cheetos. In that moment, Andrew felt a kinship with the man, a kindliness toward the idea of his existence. He watched with a soft smile on his face that froze down to something resembling horror as the man quickly grabbed the Cheetos and shoved them inside his Stefano Ricci leather jacket, forty thousand dollars, Andrew knew, not yet, but when he would look it up later. That was twenty thousand bags of Cheetos, hot enough to burn out the conscience of the world. The song took that as its first line: “Hot stick, cold heart, tearing the bag of the day apart.” Andrew never really liked the lyrics, but the music was what a leading critic called “chef’s French kiss,” a little trashy, a touch of disco, but with “a relentless motorik pulse that not only brings along every listener but enlists new ones, second after peerless second.” It was released on a label people thought of as an indie that was in fact owned by a corporation that was owned by an agricultural conglomerate that was owned by the man from the snacks section. Andrew did not possess this information. He just played his heart out at venues that increased slightly in size over the course of the year. Merch sales were up. He bought nice shoes and felt okay for a while. [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]