The Origin of Jaggerisms
And Why You Should be Living the Life of Swagger with David Jagger
In the Beginning was the Swagger, and the Swagger was with Jagger
If you’re reading this, know that you are blessed.
Jaggerisms almost didn’t happen.
You might be wondering, “What is Jaggerisms?”
Not knowing is a sin, but I forgive you, dear reader. What kind of savior would I be if I did not?
Jaggerisms is a wealth of untold knowledge your life would be dismal and pointless without, provided by yours truly.
It is a map to authenticity in this barren net-hellscape where everything is shadows on the wall.
A return—not to a place, but to the Self you abandoned because society said it was a problem.
You can feel it already, can’t you?
Your vril returning.
Let it happen.
Get comfy. Grab yourself some white rum. Have a little sip-sip. Unzip-zip your pants, take your man in hand, and allow me to help you understand. We’re going to get hot and heavy as we travel back in time a decade (Yes! A whole decade!) to explore the beginnings of that which almost never was yet is.
Feel free to stroke, just don’t spill your vril. It’s hard to replenish the Cup of Hermes. It might even take a whole decade…
A Big Bang
October 6, 2016.
The world was still mostly shadows on the wall, but the shadows were a little fainter. People still had a little swagger in their step.
I was as metal then as I am now, straight raw-dogging life—and chicks who have no business getting raw-dogged by a schlong as impressive as mine. (What can I say? Everyone deserves love, and I have an abundance of love to give.)
I had an unfortunate tendency to get drawn into the wrong crowds when drunk or high. Consumed by love (and an eight-ball), I found myself spending time with a truly deplorable lot. Absolute pathetic dweebs. How it happened was a blur, but happened it did—I picked up a pencil and paper, rolled a D20 tie, and played a roleplaying game with nerds. If I were a lesser man, I’d be ashamed to admit it.
Was it Dungeons and Dragons? Pathfinder? The fuck is the difference? It was nerd fantasy shit, and I was high as shit. I remember only feeling astounded. This was fun. Truly. I was merely playing myself in a fantasy world.
How spectacular! Even in a fantastically different setting, I was still exactly the same moggin’, raw-doggin’, tour de force.
Fantastic!
More amazingly, this game factored in a character’s charisma. Not merely as a stat, but a function. Your effect on the world is derived from your mere presence alone, an effect one might only experience in the real world if you are, say, me, or David Bowie, or Casanova, or Fred Rogers!
These nerds could have experienced being socially irresistible—the exact opposite of what they were—and yet they refused this ultimate power. The power to do and be so much more in a world that enabled them to be anyone or anything their imagination could dream.
It should come as no surprise this lot was particularly smitten with me. I brought a roleplaying dynamic they clearly weren’t accustomed to. So quick were they in the beginning to charge, blades drawn, into every conflict, even when there were none.
I showed them another way: how words could be more effective than any blade—and more fun.
Why force someone to do something you could convince them to willingly do?
Why fight the guards blocking the entrance, when you can convince them you’re a band of travelling troubadours come to play for the king?
Why kill the big baddie when you can so thoroughly twist his oh-so-tragic backstory against him so cruelly that he’d rather end himself?
Why pick the lock? You can seduce it!
It wasn’t long before I was running the show. I may as well have been the Game Master. Social encounters became the dominant mode.
I had become the main character—not because I was the brave and powerful hero. No. If anything, I was the devilish bard, eyes like diamonds and words worth more than gold.
They couldn’t help but be entranced.
The lines between reality and fiction began to fissure. Sure, their roleplay was what you’d expect from dweebs who think real world interactions play out like in Japanese porn cartoons, but it was more social than they’d ever been in their lives. How could they not be, basking in my presence as they were?
People truly underestimate the seductive nature of fiction.
I can already hear the protests:
“B-b-b-but David! It’s make-believe. What power can it have? It’s all in your head!”
Dear reader! How do you not see it?
Everything is in your head.
No one experiences objective reality. All of it is filtered through your oblivious little brain.
Everything you think happened to you, even just a moment ago, is merely a story you’re telling yourself. You relive it the moment you conjure the memory. It even changes each time you do, colored by your current mind state and perceptions. People let these memories dictate their identity with acute consistency and unwavering faith.
How many people, do you think, choose to live miserable stories and play loser characters in life? Make no mistake, dear reader, it is a choice.
This is exactly what these dweebs had done until I graced them with my participation in their basement ritual. Worlds began to collide, their characters—real and fantasy—to fuse.
One of these poor unfortunates was a was rotund and red-faced shemmoth, misted with perspiration. She began to giggle. And I mean, giggle. Like a lovely, elven maiden looking to be bred by the debonair heir of house Jagger…
Of which I was all too happy to oblige!
Yes, it may have been that I snorted another bump (I was really feeling the love now), but mostly it was because she had become that elven maiden. The worlds had fully merged, and I was the bridge between them. Through me, they could achieve social salvation.
I paid a respectable 2gp for a private room at the inn (the GM’s bedroom) and began to deflower my bloated purple elf. (I finally realized she was saying she was a drow, not a cow.) She claimed her race performs better in the dark, which made the deed easier.
She felt loose. I wasn’t sure if I’d slipped in or slipped between two sweaty, belly rolls, but she seemed to like it all the same. It was only after I’d finished loving this beached beluga, her cankles still perched on my shoulders, that an explosion occurred.
Not the one in my nethers.
There was an explosion in my mind. A big bang after banging something big. A realization that made me weep.
Literally.
It wasn’t that the lights had come on, or that I’d come down from my high, or that I was covered in stench and sweat that was more hers than mine. It was because I’d stolen what should have been the lay of my one-session brothers of the table. How many years had they spent adventuring together, pining over her, the sole femalien of their troop? The only girl low enough on the totem pole to ever consider sharing her cookie with them?
I’d spoiled that cookie. It could never work for them now, not truly.
I had set her standards too unbelievably high.
She would never love another man. Maybe never even ever like a man of their station ever again, even as friends. She would only ever dream of, only ever yearn for David of House Jagger.
I had barely stuffed my junk back into my leather pants when I barreled out of the room and straight for the exit. I didn’t bother to answer them as to where I was going, didn’t even think to say goodbye. I couldn’t bear to look my brothers in the face, lest they see my cry.
Where was I going?
Anywhere but there.
What was I going to do?
This, dear reader, is the right question.
The Word Made Manifest
Half-past midnight. A dimly-lit internet café somewhere in East Asia.
Or maybe just K-town. The spell of the session still clung to me like the rose-tinted scent of a sphincter (my fault for chancing a shocker on the cow—I mean, drow), and I’d lost count of how many edibles I’d consumed over the last hour.
Lightning flashed through the windows and rainwater ran in rivulets from the overflowing gutters. I slipped a little white rum (yum) into my coffee. (Sheer heart attack, baby!)
I glanced over my shoulder. Everyone here looked the same, all of them watching me. They all had narrowed their eyes so intensely. I trembled and faced my computer, the Word document still blank.
They’re not squinting at you, David. They’re just Asian.
A flimsy lie. I knew they were, and I knew why they were squinting. They were trying to read what I was writing, judging the lack thereof.
I had so much to share, a dragon’s hoard of thought-treasure. I’d never struggled for words ever before.
I stole another glance at the watchers, seeing all of Asia in a single man.
Perhaps it was the chemical cocktail of rum and gummies bubbling in my guts, but I felt like everything was slipping away. My sense of time, my memories, my purpose.
Why had I come here again?
What had I set out to do?
Panic set in. I cried out to the heavens, “What was the point of all this?!”
In that moment, I was absorbed into the blank white page. There was no me, no cow-scent, no Asians. Just a space of pure creation. I watched the universe dissolve and reform and re-dissolve and re-reform again. And I was the one doing it! There was communication. Not in words, but a subtle knowing:
Just be.
How could I have been so stupid?
I was trying to tell others how to be just like me.
An impossible task, as I’m sure you can guess, my brilliant, beloved reader—even for me! For to tell you would be a reduction, and in that reduction, it would simply cease to be me. The conceptual mind is too limiting; what’s required is a direct experiencing of the thing to be understood.
When I returned to myself the rain had subsided. The Rising Sun now shone red and honorably over glorious Nip Town. And in the word processor before me, seven (how synchronistic!) pages of something like principles. My Do, my Way, condensed for the Twitter-brained troglodyte.
I thought about calling it David-do, Way of David, as a way of thanking the Asians whose dragon-energy pushed me beyond my limits, but that would have been cultural appropriation, and I would never do that to my yellow friends, dear to me as they are.
I settled on the title of Jaggerisms: How to Have Swagger Like David Jagger, by David Jagger. I thought it more humbling and appropriate to adhere to a western presentation, even though I’d have loved to use that Asian influence to woo even more Asian baddies. (I love Asians, but not as much as I love you, my dear reader.)
Where that Brings Us Today
Now, you’re probably asking, “David, surely this thing was a massive success. Why, then, haven’t I heard of it? You’d have to be gay and retarded not to have read this.”
Have no fear, you are not queer, my dear friend. You may be retarded, but it’s unlikely given that you’re here, reading this. Not impossible, but I’m like ninety five percent sure.
The truth, dear reader, is this:
I fucked up.
You could be the greatest writer in the world, but if you know jack shit about the publishing world and who runs it, then good luck enlightening the masses. The powers that be don’t want you enlightened, and they definitely don’t want me reaching you, or even those nerds I had so desperately wanted to save from themselves.
I picked the first publisher of self-help books I found in the two minutes it took to Google it, sent the manuscript with no explanation from my personal Hotmail, and expected they’d recognize the emerald monkey I’d delivered that would fart and shit gold.
What more was there for me to do?
I had no intention of making money off it. No designs on fame and recognition.
All I had was a desire to help those unfortunate enough to be born as someone other than me.
Everyone would have gained from this. The publishers, the readers, the non-readers who would benefit by proxy of having these Jagified individuals in their lives.
So, I forgot about it. He who lives life with swagger doesn’t dwell in the past—he engages fully in the present.
Was my manuscript overlooked? Marked as spam? Or was it received by an agent of the Enemy, who was all too aware of the levels of power and awakening the sheepies might receive should they lay their eyeballs on it? (Almost certainly the latter.)
Regardless, I failed to follow through, and as a result, the world has suffered immensely. I look around and am struck by the obvious and undeniably sorry state of the world.
It’s getting worse.
When I got to really noticing that, I got to wondering why the world hadn’t pulled a one-eighty.
Shouldn’t the world have radically transformed for the better? Where are the flying cars? Why hasn’t the original Coke recipe made a comeback? Why haven’t micro-bikinis become the standard attire for women?
My mind raced. I felt a strange sensation in my loins, like the sinking of Atlantis all over again. I raced to the nearest bookstore, peeling through shelves like a roach on meth.
I couldn’t find it any section. I even searched online. There was no mistaking it. My book had never been published.
You may find it hard to believe, but even I can become disheartened, dear reader. It takes a lot because I’m not bitch-made, but it can happen nonetheless.
To my dismay, my Hotmail account was no more. Inactive accounts are deleted after a couple years. With the email nuked, Jaggerisms effectively had been too.
(Exactly as the Enemy intended, I’m sure.)
I stumbled listlessly down the street, and the heavens tore asunder to weep with me.
All that wisdom, lost to the cyber-graveyard like tears in the rain. I couldn’t recall a damn thing I wrote, but I knew it was gold. How could it not be? I wrote it. Could I do it again?
Divinely-inspired creation is a culmination. A crystallization of several factors into being at a given point in time. My will, my words, my desire, my emotion, my place in time and space all made love and birthed Jaggerisms in that moment. It could only have been created as it was then. Even if I restored all the original words, it would have been something inferior:
An imitation.
When I came to, the rain had stopped. Or rather, it was separated from me by an awning. The rainwater overflowed from a gutter, running down in rivulets. Thunder shattered the silence.
I was back in Ancient China, standing before a familiar café where identical, narrow-eyed faces sipped coffee and squinted at screens.
Could it be? Had the answer already come? I wanted to believe, but didn’t think I could handle being blue-balled if it wasn’t.
I entered and paid my fare.
Anticipation rose as I approached the same open spot as almost ten years ago. Not a damn thing had changed, save for wear. The computer was slower than a special-ed kid, but it was the same exact one.
I searched the documents, pleasantly surprised I wasn’t the only one who saved their documents to a public computer. (I was high when I did it. These guys were just dumbasses, heh.) My anticipation reached climax. My pants had never been creamier.
Praise to the J-Man.
It was there. It was fucking there.
I loaded Jaggerisms, so prepared for the elation I would feel upon reading it after all these years! Except, elation never came.
Only post-nut disappointment.
As I mentioned, Jaggerisms was a divinely-inspired creation, a product of the very moment in time that it was captured. Some of it timeless, yes; but some of it, not so much. It was a mere seven pages of short principles that tried to illustrate the je ne sais quoi of my being.
Now, don’t get me wrong, these are a dense seven pages. To truly understand even one principle could take a gifted man years. But I’ve lived another decade since the writing. Ten full, vigorous years of invaluable experience and growth (even perfection can become more perfect).
What I’m driving at, my marvelous reader, is that I realized just how incomplete this work was. It would never be complete, not so long as I kept living.
I made a copy for myself and deleted it from the computer. Not because I was ashamed of it. Anything I produce is sheer magnificence. I may even still share it in its original form someday!
I deleted it because this work has a purpose:
To uplift readers the world over, restore their swagger, and grant them salvation.
To succeed in that goal, the work needs to be alive, as I am. As you are.
A book is a done deal. I’m not the submit it and quit it kind of guy, I swear. I want to keep on loving you. I would be inconceivably selfish to not share my decade of character development with you.
We’re living in the internet age, baby! Why does it have to be a book? Why do I need a nosey publisher to gatekeep me from reaching you? I just need somewhere to post it, so you can read it. Now you get ongoing updates to your game of life.
Hell yeah!
Where We’re Running To
You’ve probably got one last question joggin’ that noggin of yours, my brilliant reader:
What exactly can I expect here?
That, dear reader, is the right question.
What can you expect here?
Me, of course; but enough about me! What about you?
You can expect life to get better.
Yes, a little bit of Davey in your life will do that, but I’m talking about something more tangible here, man! I’m talking about ideas I’m going to share with you on a regular basis, so that you can live life with a little more swagger. (Hopefully, a lot more swagger, but Chiraq wasn’t ruined in a single day.)
Where I went wrong with Jaggerisms the first time was that I created something not unlike the Tao Te Ching (probably due to the dragon-influences under which it was drafted).
And there’s nothing wrong with that! The Tao is a phenomenal text, and those who get it definitely get it. The problem is, when you look at all the sheepies of the world, it’s quite obvious that hardly any of them actually get it. Jaggerisms would have much the same problem.
The approach here will be different. You’ll notice the title of this Substack is different from the original body of work:
Jaggerisms: Living the Life of Swagger with David Jagger
It’s subtle, but do you see it? I’ll give you a moment…
…
…
Okay, I don’t have all day! I’ll just tell you.
Living the Life of Swagger with David Jagger.
With, my friend. With!
Not how to have it like me. No one could ever be like me. Not that that should make you sad. No one could ever be you either! Which is almost as good. But we can both live the life of swagger. Together!
How this differs from and will succeed where How to Have Swagger Like David Jagger failed, is that this is a collaboration. A community.
You and me.
Me and you.
We’re walking this road together.
(No, no one is holding anyone’s hand. Yeesh.)
I’ll introduce you to ideas and build upon them. Take a little time, woo them, get them wrapped around my finger before I bring them to climax, squirting their juicy insights directly into your fertile mind. As is the modus operandi of the greatest seductive artists, you’ll be so wrapped up in the happenings you won’t realize what’s happening. You’ll be left dazed, astounded, maybe even a little confused, but exuding a soft, warm glow that radiates outward, forever changing your being and that of those and the world around you.
We will all be as nodes, inextricably linked in an ever-extending chain of causality—and when we flip our state, so too will we flip the states of our surrounding nodes. Not because we are forcing them, but because our glow is so delicious they can’t help but mirror it. Who wouldn’t want to? It’s sublime. This, you sexy bastard reader you, is how we will save the world!
And you…
You can fire back! I’m no book. My words are not commandments, forever etched in stone. We have a comments section. We have a chat. I share my Gospel, and you share yours!
So, my friend, I encourage you to unbuckle your chastity belt, get comfy, hit subscribe, and prepare to get wet and wild. This is not for the faint of heart or the weak-minded. Your dick must be this long to ride this ride.
I know, dear reader, that you’re up to the task. You wouldn’t still be here, reading this if you weren’t. But since you are, consider this my heartfelt handshake. (Heh, that was my masturbation hand.)
You and I? We’re bringing swagger back, baby.