Fugazy
Lunch in a loud restaurant.
One guy already deep in the machine, rich, loud, untouchable, beating his chest like a madman who figured out the joke before everyone else.
The other one younger, hungry, still trying to understand the rules of the game, sitting there like if he listens close enough maybe he’ll find the secret.
That scene in The Wolf of Wall Street was never really about stocks.
It was about illusion.
The old wolf looking at the new wolf and basically saying, none of this is real.
The numbers.
The image.
The status.
The performance.
“Fugayzi, fugazi. It’s a whazy. It’s a woozie. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist… it’s not fucking real.”
As you get older, you start seeing past the smoke screen.
You stop looking at what people say and start watching what they do.
You stop being impressed by appearances.
You start seeing Fugazy everywhere.
People building entire lives on things that disappear the second life gets real.
Confidence that falls apart with one rejection.
Love that only survives when it’s easy.
Friendships built on convenience.
Success rented on credit.
People demanding respect they never learned to give.
Fugazy.
Most of the time, you’re living inside your own acceptable bullshit.
Decorating life with nice clothes.
Good captions.
Perfect angles.
A polished image.
Same man underneath, carrying whatever he refuses to face.
That’s the real scene.
Not the restaurant.
Not the chest pounding.
Not the money.
The real scene is what happens later.
When the room goes quiet.
When the phone stops ringing.
When the relationship cracks.
When the body reminds you it won’t stay young forever.
That’s when the noise falls away.
That’s when you meet what actually matters to you.
What stays.
What holds.
What you can’t fake.
That’s where Fugazy ends.
And whatever truth is left standing… that part is yours.
Charles Bukowski would’ve sat in the corner of that restaurant, half drunk, cigarette hanging from his mouth, watching all of it like a man watching adult children fight over Monopoly money.
Probably laughing.
Bukowski wrote about the ugly truth of people.
The masks.
The loneliness.
The mess underneath the polished version.
He knew most people are starving for something real while protecting everything fake.
And that’s the joke.
We spend years chasing smoke and call it life.