Murphy's Law

When I first took this job I got in the habit of referring to the time—admittedly too long—spent in the service industry as the bad old days. It wasn’t because I had no fun (I did) or that I thought there was any future in it (I didn’t). It wasn’t that I felt joining the corporate world (grad students and waiters refer to it as the real world) was any type of instant ticket to peace or fulfillment. But it did remove one from the front lines of a scene with too many lives on the fast track to nowhere. Most people there fail to understand where they are, and where they are not going.

And when I think of the place some people never find a way to leave, it makes me remember one person in particular. More than the implicit slights suffered or the stalled potential each day I strapped on an apron, when I think about what I could never afford to lose, I think of Izzy. That, of course, was not his real name, but it was what everyone called him. When he and I first met I would have sworn he was in his mid-forties, but in fact he had only recently turned thirty-six. Not old in the nine-to-five arena but ancient in the restaurant business. A lifer who had never been promoted to general manager, he was a satellite drifting through the soiled orbit of a franchised business. He was never handed his own place to run, and he seemed entirely satisfied with that arrangement. In fact, as I came to see for myself, he counted on being an assistant behind the scenes, the hardened soldier who could close up shop and count the checks. We were often the last two left, hours after the final customer had called a cab or rolled the DWI dice. After a shift that started at 4 PM Izzy would set up camp in the sweltering office in the back of the kitchen, going about the unexciting but excuses-free business of closing up.

When Izzy showed up for his shift the following afternoon he always looked like someone had scraped him off the bottom of a greasy skillet. Red eyes blurred, his neck shrieking in silent agony from the burn of a blunt razor, the cigarettes and coffee escaping in sluggish waves from every inch of his sagging skin. Head bowed not in deference but disdain of the daylight; he could scarcely formulate the words being signaled from bruised brain to long-suffering lips. He would step up to the bar, shake his head and ask me to call him an ambulance. Then he’d disappear into the men’s room for a minute or two, emerging like a televangelist with a badly ironed shirt. He could barely tie his shoe, but after his magic act in the crapper he would be ready to plate a thousand entrees and run laps around the building in his wingtips (managers who wear comfortable shoes are never taken seriously, but they don’t realize until it’s too late that it’s not because of the shoes).

For the next eight-to-ten hours, in between return trips to the powder room (occasionally he may have even used the toilet), Izzy was constant, awkward motion. All the waiters were in awe of him and all the waitresses were repulsed by him (especially the ones he had slept with). Izzy could sweat out more alcohol in a single shift than most of us could drink in an entire weekend, and he never missed a day of work during the two years I knew him. Even if you didn’t catch him ducking into the bathroom you always knew he had recently refueled because he would suck his teeth like someone trying to extract snake venom. The lip smacking and teeth licking were, to me, the black and blue collar stage of development between rock star and burnout, the line so many in the service industry straddle before they get out or go under.

None of this fazed me, which isn’t to say it was not unsettling, but grunts in the trench don’t offer advice to their sergeants, so I mainly focused on my own unsavory habits. But I could never figure out how Izzy, when he retreated to the office each night to match receipts, guest checks and time sheets, was able to polish off an entire bottle of peppermint schnapps. When he finally went home, closer to sunrise than midnight, that bottle he took back with him would always be empty. At first I figured he was trying to impress or even intimidate me (full success on both fronts), but after months of the same scenario, I had no choice but to acknowledge that his appetites and obsessions had, at some point, evolved from unhealthy to superhuman. That bottle was not something he wanted, and was no longer something he needed; it was simply something that he required, along with the bathroom breaks and the air his lungs inhaled. I worked dozens of shifts where I didn’t see him eat a scrap of food, but he never went into that office without his bottle of schnapps. And at least once a week he’d arrive at work with fresh bottles he kept to stock the bar. I could never fathom the physics, or biology (or algebra) that enabled a man to drain a fifth each evening and still function, but I also learned the hard way in high school that some subjects would, for me, remain forever mysterious.

By the time he took his transfer to the next location (never a demotion but never an advancement) he looked like he could collect social security. How long can that lifestyle sustain itself? I asked myself, then, and ponder it now. Where is Izzy today? Is he in an assisted living facility somewhere, or at the bottom of a river? Will I find him patrolling an intersection one night, not embarrassed to ask for tips after all these years? Or did he take the hard way out and start a family; his bad habits replaced by baby bottles, dirty diapers and manicured lawns? Has he subscribed to a different sort of salvation, whacked out of his skull with sobriety?

(*From a fictional work-in-progress, inspired by unreal events that may or may not have happened.)

You are alone.

You are back in the city and you are alone as you emerge into the open and empty space, stepping out from the stale depths of the subway. The city has been blessed with snow and the air is heavy, like your thoughts. An austere chill holds sway as daylight succumbs to impatient evening.

You walk swiftly down the blank sidewalk, deflecting the grins and grimaces of commuters as they hurry by, delayed waves of anxious motion. The city is alive all around you: in the circular maze of windows and their electrical language, brightening as the sky darkens; in the cabs that hustle past, mocking pedestrians with warm exhalations of spent energy; in the stench of steam rising from sewage drains, escaping sullied rivers that flow in underground tunnels, teeming beneath the gray and black city; and suddenly in the misshapen face of the man who approaches you, eyes twitching an irremediable message (Help me, Help me! HELP ME!) and you shrink back until he slinks back into shadows, head shaking the answer he always gets (No, No! NO!). Your eyes guide you forward, eager to escape this squalid spectable.

Piles of steaming garbage smolder in neglected piles, suffocating beneath the sullen snow. Stepping awkwardly you slip and fall to one knee, genuflecting in the silky slush. Impossibly, you feel the cluster of sunken bags moving beside you and glancing down you see eyes (for a second you see yourself in those tired eyes). A distinct scent settles in the clumsy shift of air –one you instinctively recognize– and you scramble away. Your breath bursts in short white clouds that live and die simultaneously but the smell clings to you, assailing your nostrils. You understand what this signifies and you are ashamed.

Damp clouds hang low in a disappearing sky: there will be more snow. And the wind, previously a child is now a bitter and aged man who coughs in your face, his bile a chill that grips your entire being: gusting and swirling at your feet, working its way up, over and around you, through you. Moving on slowly you curse this city and its wretched reality, a reality you will not escape from. Wishing warm thoughts, you close your eyes to think of the sun and somehow

you recall another city in another time and how frightened you were as you traveled, alone, through the hostile marketplace and the mass of humanity, an ocean upon the sand; there was no comfort in that prehistoric city: you were almost swallowed up by the groundswell of sallow, sneering faces and there was no refuge, even in the sanctuary –no solace in that holy place. And the molten sun soaked your skin, its heat causing you to look away, to look down and in looking you saw and in seeing you were saved because suddenly you were not alone: no longer was your path solitary because he walked with you and his stride was purposeful and deliberate, and you felt him brush against you as he moved ahead, so you fell behind him and

you find yourself directly behind him, a few paces behind the man, unable to overtake him because the snow has been packed down by other pedestrians. You walk together, silhouettes in the swaying mist. Thoughts dance rapidly in your mind, congealing as the chill numbs your face. You watch the wind blow back the long hair that masks the figure whose shadow falls in front of you, and you realize that the brunt of the winter blast is being borne by this disheveled scarecrow come to life, strangely out of place in the frigid city. Yet he’s somehow familiar with his hunched shoulders and humble gait: looking down you see the scarecrow wears broken boots; his bared soles scrape the soiled ground. You ponder his pain, the imploding agony of this brutal scenario playing itself out in front of you as you live and breathe, once again in the city, so you close your eyes and suddenly the snow is sand and

you remember the narrow path you once traveled as the stranger walked beside you –and on that mild evening he carried his sandals in his hands and the sand was warm underneath, each grain alive between your toes– and this stranger, with his serenity and silence, reminded you of the one you knew before; the one who walked among you, always in front of you, and even then you followed him into the city: he was known by the people there and they threw flowers at his feet and smiled and you believed when the water turned sweet and red and your mind swam, growing tranquil and light. It was easy to believe, then, while you watched the cup overflow and the crimson drops fell to the ground not unlike tears and

then the sand is snow and the red is there, somehow the red is still there. Eyes down you see the darkened snow, trailing a steady stream from the open sole of the scarecrow.

You are left alone as he moves silently onward, unrecognized, into the cold corners of the city.

I.

Take a guy:

Let’s say he’s about my age, old enough to own his own condo and pay almost all his bills sometimes, who is young enough to be unmarried but old enough to understand he is not getting any younger. Add a dose of fresh alienation—not enough to be unhealthy, of course, but enough to enable him to function in a world full of imbecility, indifference and all those happily-ever-afters awaiting him on the other side of his flat screen TV. Take this guy and give him just enough stability so that he has no excuses, but plenty of alibis. Maybe he’s estranged from too many old friends, or aggrieved about his absent parents, or perhaps he is just emerging from the wreckage of a ruined relationship or, probably, he is utterly average in every regard, except for the uncomfortable fact that, unlike almost everyone else he knows, he is aware of it.

I am not alone. I have a best friend, who happens to be a dog. He is really good for me, reminding me to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and generally making sure that I get out a few times a day. He walks me whenever he gets the chance. Our favorite time is after work, when we reenter the building and the walls and halls come alive, warm with the savory smells of home-made meals (you can never smell fast food, although that scent lingers in the elevator, as if ashamed to be associated with the honesty, the effort and industry of these prepared productions).

No one sits down to dinner anymore, but all around me, people are sitting down, eating meat loaf, or some sort of roast that has simmered on low heat all afternoon. Maybe there is even a pie prepared for dessert. Maybe, inside someone’s kitchen, it’s still the 1950’s.

And I remind myself that someday, if my cards play me right, I will enjoy a real meal around a table, and experience all that I’ve been missing during these efficient years of isolation. I will clear the table and clean the dishes, I will sit on the couch and take a crack at the crossword, or catch a made-for-TV movie, or go run errands or consult a book of baby names for the offspring on the way, and eventually I will work on improving my bad habits and attempt to overlook my wife’s inadequacies (the quirks that were so endearing in those early days). I will, at last, learn to communicate openly and as an adult. Mostly, I will not be alone.

II.

There is a man who sits near the pumps at the gas station I drive by each day. The man is very obviously from somewhere else and has about him the certain look—the meek, awestruck eyes, the apprehensive gestures that indict him as someone who speaks little if any English—a stranger.

He remains respectfully distant from the customers—who incessantly fill their tanks, like bees returning to the nest before heeding the urgency of their instinctual obligations—but near enough to the action to remain in plain view. He sells flowers. Actually, he doesn’t seem to sell anything, he pretty much sits there, on an upturned milk crate, often from early morning until well in the evening, after the rest of the weary warriors have commuted past him, home from work and their worries of the wicked world. He silently, stoically, plies his wares, content to play his part in the charade: he is not accomplishing much, he is begging, and the milk crate and collection of fading flowers at his feet communicate his inexpressible anguish. Please help me, his unscrubbed face, his unlaced sneakers, his oversized slacks, his filthy, fidgeting fingers—everything but his voice—all ask, saying what he cannot, and will not, say for himself.

III.

Hard to get over lonely people.

This is from a song, although those aren’t the real words; those are the words you heard—which sounded and seemed real enough—until your adult ears eventually understood that you had actually been making a great song even better. In your mind anyway.

Ah, look at all the lonely people, you sing, to yourself.

Midnight is the cruelest hour, causing saints to sin and sinners to sing, shrieking when, besotted with spirits and spirits spiraling, impaired and incoherent, they realize they are lost with no safe way home.

The bar beckons. Bars, if they are good for nothing else, are good for that: bars beckon. Watering holes for weary warriors who want what they got and get nothing they ask for (they could pray but they know better). Swinging down accustomed streets, a humid mist sweats under the streetlights and clings to the faces of these silent, suffering souls. Someone wades through the haze of colorless ties and colorful perfumes. Familiar sights and sounds: laughter, screams, secrets and seductions, spilling out of mouths that come to places like this, killing themselves slowly in order to live.

So what happens? What doesn’t happen. The same old story: You don’t go looking for trouble, but trouble has no qualms finding you. And it finds you, as always. Trouble is so reliable that way. You work toward being a lover and not a fighter. The only problem is, it is usually the loving that leads to the fighting.

Not working, but there is a lot of work to do. You go above and beyond the call of duty. And the harder you work, the more you seem to pay. Only in America could you do so little and get paid so much, then work so hard and pay so much. Someone makes the rules, and it’s not you.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Alone again, or: driving home with the devil riding shotgun. There’s nowhere good this can go and everybody knows that driving blind with deafened senses is dumb. Shifting and stuttering but smart enough not to pray (you know better). Avoiding eye contact, the street refuses to speak—it will not willingly partner this perpetration in progress. Overhead, the fully dressed, deep green oak trees on either side lean down low, eager to eavesdrop. Here’s what they hear:

Please help me.

IV.

I’m listening to the old woman again.

This is another part of my daily routine: every time I enter the building after walking my dog, or if I’m stopping to get the mail, or anytime I am anywhere between my front door and the main entrance, this woman (I have no other option but to say she is an old woman) whose name I of course cannot remember, appears like a mosquito at a campsite.

She is there every time—every time—if I’m walking out (I’ve learned not to step out of my door in only my boxer shorts) to throw my trash down the chute, she’s there; if I am coming or going to work, she’s there; if I open my door (I’ve learned not to open my door without my boxer shorts on) to get the newspaper, she’s there; and especially if I’m returning with rapidly cooling carry-out food, she’s there.

I had half-seriously begun to consider whether or not she had rigged my door to some sort of honing device, and then I slowly started to notice, over time, it isn’t just me (of course it isn’t just me)—it’s even worse than that. It’s everyone, it’s anyone: anyone she can see or talk to, anyone she can make that human touch with, however fleetingly, any excuse she can find to escape the oppression of her immaculate isolation.

V.

When the train left the station, it had two lights on behind,

Well, the blue light was my baby and the red light was my mind.

I didn’t say that.

A daydream:

Every so often I can’t help hoping that there will be a knock on my door and when I open it, who is there but my sexy soul mate, a beautiful woman who heard the blues music every time she walked by, and wondered if, according to her own fantasy, a sensitive, erudite dude had been right there all along, waiting for her, waiting for happily ever after. And after a while, she could no longer ignore the siren song escaping under the small space under the front door and came knocking.

Of course, this illusion presupposes three things, in descending order of unlikelihood: one, that there are such things as soul mates; two, that my soul mate happens to live in my building; and three, that anyone actually listens to—much less enjoys—blues music.

All my love’s in vain.

What he said.

VI.

I see the woman, sitting silent, alone, waiting for the bus that may or may not decide to pick her up today.

I think: same woman, same bus stop, same book in her hands: Where is she going? What is she doing? What is she reading?

The woman is a nun, as her quaint costume makes abundantly clear. She sits alone, silent, a human statue: perfect posture now habitual from years of training, browbeating and, ultimately, ardent emulation. Her attention to the small book she holds is entire, unyielding, austere.

And it takes several seconds for the understanding to occur: this is a cliché. Of course. But like any cliché worth its stench, there is a twist, a discernible fork in the future, a possibility.

Either: this woman—this quiet, meekly loyal, unreservedly religious woman—is, of course, reading the bible. For the thousandth time, the millionth? In her unremarkable way fortifying one of the increasingly intractable truths: there still exists the possibility that custom and tradition count for something, are still worth attaining. And this woman, this archetype, beautifies what should not change, an innocence somehow not contaminated by our co-opted culture.

Or: it brings into sharp relief the pitiful, ceaseless certainty that our capacity for wonderment, our curiosity and confusion, are not strong enough to escape superstitions and easy answers: that anyone could find comfort, or meaning, in a ritualized routine, reading the same spurious words endlessly, unfolding their anti-mysteries into eternity.

VII.

Cats are everywhere.

How did this happen? When did that slippery slope of sentimental turn from simple companionship to disconcerting, then beyond even that? It’s not your fault: you could see the other cats coming, waiting out there in the evening; and yourself, inside, able at any time to make it all better. All of these overlooked lives, are they the symptom or the antidote for that feeling you cannot constrain? Are they serving a separate purpose, a preemptive action against isolation? An excuse to keep connected, in some small way? A strategy to keep from slipping, to stave off starvation? Or the streets, which are always hungry, always eager to be kept company when nights bring the cold comfort of winter?

Yes, you think (to yourself again): it could be all of those things, eventually. Inevitably. But mostly (you know), any effort you might someday make would be driven by the fear of becoming that person. The person who everyone knew, the one who had patrolled the same city corner for as long as anyone was able—or wanted—to remember. The man with his hand-scribbled signs, capital letter screeds against the machine, words that sought to explain who he was and why he was here. His message, excusing himself from any culpability, of course, and allowing everyone who took the time to try and make sense of it all that they were either with him or against him; if they did nothing to intervene, they were abetting the not-so-secret society that could snap a finger and take everything you owned, including your identity. He stood at the intersection for years, outlasting several politicians who recycled themselves in public office, sworn to uphold the status quo and ensure that the have-nots would not, and keep everyone else safe from the crimes committed by people who could not close their eyes.

And then, one day, he was no longer there. He had just disappeared.

How does this happen?

You’ve seen some things, of course. You have heard them, read about them. The things people talked about when they talked about crazy people. The sort of people who, after numerous squabbles with long-suffering neighbors, finally had to have it out with Johnny Law over the piles of junk spewing out from their cellars, piling out from inside, forming extensions of the hand-me-down universe they’d created (in their own image?)—misguided gods of an always-imperfect world. These people who would holler and curse, and show up in court, when convicted, to protest that there was a method to their madness (they wouldn’t call it madness at all), a purpose to their paranoia, that it was no one else’s business if they found some sort of salvation in other folks’ debris, redeemable lives otherwise left for dead. Exasperated landlords, forced to take pictures in order to appeal to the proper authorities, having to prove that they weren’t capable of fabricating this sort of insanity: carpets pulled up from the floors, the linoleum in the kitchen removed, presumably by hand, the stacks of unread newspapers, the insects. And the pictures, of course, only half told the story, since pictures don’t move, pictures don’t stink, pictures only imitate what they are programmed to report. The stories that go far beyond the obligatory shit-smeared-on-the-walls sort of psychosis that always seems so overdone in bad movies (because the movies are bad; because truth always outpaces our best efforts to expose it). 

Then what happens?

You are (of course) left asking questions that always better unaddressed. Who could explain the motivation behind behavior like that? Who would want to? Who could comprehend where a mind has been, or is going, to find sense or security in this imitation of living?

VIII.

I think the same question each time I see him (every day: the same man in the same spot, holding the same sign that tells everyone who he is, now—begging the question: who did he used to be, at some point in the past?) at the intersection he has stood at for several years now: the cardboard sign he holds both question and answer: Homeless veteran (the explanation), can you put some pocket change in this plastic cup (the question). The sign says he is a veteran. Okay. And even if he isn’t actually a veteran, he has been homeless long enough to be a veteran; or if he is not actually homeless, he has been acting the part long enough—as long as most people cruising past him have held jobs—to earn the title. Either way, it is time for a promotion.

And so, I think, this is the problem with the homeless problem: it wasn’t (some of us learned—too late) the ones who hustled or even approached you who were down and out; they were the ardent ones, half the time they weren’t even homeless; it is the ones you never even saw, even when they sprawled on the concrete right beside you, the ones who were down, the ones who were out, the ones who had nothing to ask for, nothing to say, nothing to do except wait, sit it out until time or the whiter man’s burden delivered them that eventual, inevitable verdict. It was the ones you could afford not to be afraid of, the ones who could not even hurt themselves, because they’d already dug as deep inside as their ashen fingers could reach, the ones too dead to tear out their hearts, but not dead enough to unloose their souls, the ones who learned (too late) that death was only impatient for the fools who feared it, it had all the time in the world for those who the world owed nothing except the decency of an overdue death.

Could that be me?

The ultimate fear, the oldest worry. Who knew how it happened, who could make sense of it? And yet. These people do not wake up one random morning, on the streets and out of their minds. Or do they? If you believed the signs the man on the corner held, the government did this to him—and could do it to anyone else: that was his message, his mission. How different were those handwritten signs from my aunt’s scribbled revisions? Was one merely an extension of the other?

The problem with the homeless problem is that these people who don’t see you and can’t see themselves are all chasing something they can no longer name: memories. Or, even worse, it is the memories that are chasing them, speaking in tongues they long ago ceased to understand.

IX.

Myself when I am real:

Real old, that is. At least forty. Maybe fifty, sixty even—it’s almost inevitable, if you believe some of what you see and half of what you read that humans live that long these days.

You are looking in the mirror, standing over the sink. We’ve been here before, recently. And, of course, the sluggish maestro in your mind reminds you that this is approximately the sixty-thousandth time you’ve brushed your teeth (but now, with age and experience, more than slightly appreciative that these are your teeth you are cleaning, not dentures—not yet). But you are distracted by a difference, a new presence you have added to your arsenal of afflictions. There is a growth on your back. And apparently it’s been there for a while, because it has already misshapen your shoulders, making you half-whale and half-fairytale caricature. It is obvious that the bones have shifted ever so slightly from this new burden, the way a bank account accrues interest, over time.

This is not cancer, it can be claimed with some confidence. You are so certain cancer is at some stage of development inside you that you’ll suffer those semi-annual exams, just to keep his fears simmering on the back burner. There is no mystery—this, after all, is not a dream—it is obvious how this accessory was earned. Overlooked, or ignored, while attention focused on other things, like freedom, a life apart, independent, answering to no one else, et cetera.

This is how it happens: you find ways to displace the pains, internalize the trepidation, ingest the indignity, hang on to the hang-ups. You disregard what remains always on the inside, and it takes root, takes hold and takes on a life of its own. Everyone else might see it, and they may even talk about it, but unless you notice it, until you see it for yourself, it never exists. It is simply not there until you finally feel it: eventually, inevitably you feel the pain.

It is loneliness. 

X.

If I had lived in the ‘50’s, I would have taken a real job right out of college, or I may not have gone to college. I would have had to start earning a living to support my family: married at twenty-two, a father within the year. That’s just the way it would have been.

Maybe I’d like my job; maybe I would be content. Maybe I would consume so many steaks and cigarettes and whiskey sours that nothing could touch me—I would be obese, an impenetrable fortress of flesh, and no pain could get past me.

Or maybe I would work and eat and smoke myself into a muddled mess and punch the clock prematurely—another casualty of the Cold War. Maybe I would be smart enough to have left my family something, and maybe my wife would remarry and live off the fat of my labor and I wouldn’t begrudge her because I was in a better place, drinking Bloody Marys on the great golf course in the sky.

Or maybe my wife, being of her time, would not wish to remarry and instead focus her energies on the grandchildren and church functions and the increasingly mundane exigencies of old age. Maybe she’d wish to meet another man but her prospects would be poor—after all, she was married to a big slob who she somehow stayed devoted to and still mourned. Plus, there were always the kids to contend with. Used goods are used goods, whether you’re talking cars, real estate or relationships.

Maybe she would solider on, alone, oblivious to the insanity of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, indifferent to the surreal psychosis of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and grow into her shrinking body the way a spider’s web settles into a windowsill.

Maybe she would eventually understand that the family home—the house in which she lost her virginity, raised her children, cleaned a thousand rooms, cooked a million meals—had outlasted her, and embrace the inevitable.

Maybe, in the end, she would be a lot like the woman across the hall. She’s had a good life (please allow her to have been happy: in my mind if not in actual fact). She, at least, once had a husband, and maybe a son and daughter whom she dotes on and who love her dearly, but they live so far away and are so busy with work and kids and life and time just slips away and so it goes.

Or maybe it is even worse than that: maybe she was never married, never found exactly what she was looking for, or the right ones overlooked her until it was too late. Maybe she was cursed with the blessing of being always apart, in all the important ways, from the utterly average, anonymous faces she came into contact with day in and day out, and like almost no one else she knew, she was unaware of it.

I want to walk out my door, but I can’t.

And this time, for once, it’s not because I don’t want to, it’s because I’m desperately certain that she won’t be outside waiting for me.

Blogs are, or can be, like diaries.

Except that diaries, by nature, are private. Which begs the question: do people who blog censor or soften the observations, complaints or critiques that in other times would exist inside a document designed to remain unread by others? (Or more to the point, should they?) To be certain, only a few years ago, thoughts like the ones I’m about to express would have been safely ensconced inside a journal, not read by anyone else, even including myself (I don’t often return to old journals, hopefully because I’m too busy living in the here and now). And for whatever it’s worth, I am humble enough to know that small numbers of people visit this blog, and I have enough sense (or self-respect) to instinctively acknowledge that nobody is well served by overly earnest airing of personal trivia.

Put another way, I don’t begrudge anyone else documenting every last detail of their existences (no matter how mundane or mawkish); I simply remain uninterested in reading about it. In that regard, blogs are self-regulating: if you don’t write things that others will find interesting, you won’t have an audience. And who cares anyway? In that regard, blogs are like diaries: people post on them because they want to, or need to, and the concept of friends or strangers reading their innermost thoughts won’t necessarily hamper their willingness to compose. Still, only the sensation-seekers looking for notoriety (usually the already famous, and even those folks have a shelf-life of about six months) go out of their way to wax solipsistic in a public forum.

When it comes to the death of my mother, I of course have meditated on the loss privately and publically, and anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) understands that her life and death are an unequivocal component of my ongoing existence. Nothing remarkable about that, really: it is what it is. I am not alone; in fact, one need not suffer the untimely death of a parent to understand that their presence is inextricable from one’s own. That said, it’s not because my feelings or experiences are unique, but because they are the opposite that I have little compunction sharing some thoughts on this plaintive anniversary. Indeed, for me these occasions are much more a celebration of her life (and her unambiguously positive influence in my life) than any sort of disconsolate meditation on death. It is what it is.

 

As I have mentioned in other pieces (most recently on my birthday), one of my earliest and most positive memories of art and discovery is associated with my mother: listening to Nutcracker Suite and drawing pictures. Tchaikovsky has a real Proust-like effect on me (and, I suspect, a great many grown-ups who have indelible memories of the Nutcracker or Fantasia, or both), but on a purely aesthetic level it is like Bizet’s Carmen: I can (and do) enjoy it on purely musical terms. Moreover, I prefer it that way (and having seen my share of holiday performances and the opportunity to enjoy a full performance of Carmen, I’m happy to have those experiences and need not go there again). Anyway, there are more than a handful of favorite moments (coincidentally or not, conductor Fritz Reiner’s version from 1960 is the first compact disc I ever purchased, in 1986), but the one that gets me every time is the sombre yet majestic ”Coffee: Arabian Dance”.

There’s no shame in my game. I cannot deny my past and the fact of the matter is, back in the ’70s I thought Jesus Christ Superstar was pretty awesome. Moms, sis and I knew this one by heart (at least Side A of the 8-Track, which received heavy airplay in the Ford Grenada). This was in the pre-Kiss and post Fantasia time period, and of course before I discovered the original “rock opera” Tommy (not the last time ALW would be influenced by a rock band). In any event, this was my first and last dalliance with Andrew Lloyd Webber and while I can hardly stomach it now, oh how I loved it then. And you know what? A handful of moments are still worth reliving.

I’ve also alluded to the fact that we worshipped at the altar of the White Album, and we’d listen to the cassette (taped from the original double record) constantly in the car. Our favorite singalong was (obviously) “Rocky Raccoon”, but one of my favorites that I can never hear, now, without thinking of my mother and those million car rides is another great song by McCartney, “Mother Nature’s Son”:

It was pretty cool to watch movies with my mom, who was much more lenient than Pops when it came to the Rated R ones. One we watched many times (which I haven’t seen in ages and suspect I’d like much less now) was The Big Chill. Of course, the soundtrack was ubiquitous at that time and did for Motown what soundtracks like O Brother, Where Art Thou? did for bluegrass and Goodfellas did for oldies (or at least Tony Bennett). It’s silly to contemplate now, but it was almost a novelty to hear Smokey Robinson and The Temptations in the very arid early years of the ’80s. Indelible baby steps for an impressionable young honky:

Beethoven. I’ve spoken often in regards to my worship of Ludwig Van. Everyone encounters the symphonies first, but once I latched onto the piano sonatas, that was it. It still is. I’m not sure if I ever succeeded in getting my mother to really appreciate the immortal  Mondschein, but she at least tolerated how often it was played during the late ’80s and early ’90s in her house. Since I’ve already thrown Barenboim a bone, I’d like to give props to Freddy Kempf’s superlative rendition of one of the truly sublime compositions ever written:

The other great discovery and love of my life around this time was Bob Marley: kind of like Beethoven and the symphonies, it’s impossible to have ears and not be exposed to Legend at some point in high school or college. When the amazing Songs of Freedom (by far the best box set of all time) came into my life during grad school I latched onto it like a remora. This career-spanning set opened a large door wide on Marley’s music (particularly the mostly unknown, and remarkable, work from the late ’60s and very early ’70s), and eventually, reggae. Moms needed no convincing, she formed her own deep love and appreciation for Marley and would sing his songs on my answering machine. Suffice it to say, our shared love of the great man is one of the very special bonds in my musical and spiritual life.

I think she saw pretty quickly that I was going to be a special case, and there is little doubt that regardless of anyone’s opinion, I was off and running early on, and little could come between me and music. Nevertheless, her encouragement (from Kiss to The Beatles to The Doors all the way through classical and then jazz) was generous, ceaseless and always appreciated. It’s kind of neat to consider that a CD she originally bought for me my senior year of college (when I explained to her that it was very important for both my studies and my sanity to procure this album) is one I wrote about almost twenty years later. I can’t think of a more beautiful song from a more perfect album to commemorate my gratitude.

Not too much needs to be said by way of introduction to Jimi Hendrix, but my mother definitely dug some of his (less experimental? more accessible?) work. This one was, and is, a no brainer: a song he wrote about his mother (who passed away when he was ten years old): “Angel”:

August 27, 2002 was the first day of the rest of our lives. Anyone who has lost a loved one will recall (or half-reall) the blur of events that come after, all of which are a blessing in the disguise of distraction. I did a lot of driving: driving from father’s house to my place, from funeral home to father’s place, to the airport to pick up relatives. The emotions and sensations would become overwhelming at times, and there are those awful moments when you wonder how you can possibly find peace or make sense of anything ever again. During one of these episodes I was coming or going somewhere and I had not been paying attention to my car stereo, and then this song (by the great Israel Vibration) broke through that haze like the sun and saved my life:

Finally, and this one is the most important, for me.
The ’70s: this one reminds me of coming home from school and spending time in the house in between games of soccer or kickball or whatever else I was up to in those days. I have a memory: it was either autumn or winter, but it was a day I couldn’t play outside, so I was stuck inside the house and my mother had first dibs on the sounds. She was a huge fan of Janis Ian (as I would become, and remain) and I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider Between The Lines one of the better albums of that time, or anytime. “At Seventeen”, “Tea and Sympathy”, “Light a Light”: this is as good as it gets. But it’s the swan song, “Lover’s Lullaby” that affects me most; it haunts and restores me in equal measure. This one makes me think of my mother, so young; myself, so young, and even the beautiful Janis Ian, so incredibly young and so unbelievably beautiful. Sentimental? Not so much. True, this is wistful on multiple levels, and while my nature is to embrace or confront things that I consider cliche, it still took me quite a while before I could bring myself to listen to this song after my mother’s death.

I can, now, and when I do I naturally think of her. And inevitably I think about myself:

Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 –Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

Any time I need to feel reminded that I am one of the lucky ones, I simply need to look at this picture. That pose is not unique; virtually every child has at least one “money shot” of the post-birth adoring gaze. Or, every child that is fortunate enough to be born in a hospital (or home) in safe conditions, to a mother who welcomes the moment and most importantly, is prepared for the moments (and days and years) that will follow. I don’t need to resort to religion or spirituality or even new age-esque invocations of the universal bond; I can just consider the infinitesimal likelihood of even making it from my father to my mother, if you know what I mean (as my father has always been fond of saying, “You owe me your life”), is rather statistically remarkable in and of itself. To know I was brought into this wicked, wonderful world by two parents who put my safety, well-being and evolution at the forefront of their collective energies is to be humbled, and grateful.

And there’s John Cusack, playing me on my 19th birthday. Some of his finest work; he managed to look just like me (extra props for the authentic paisley tie, which was featured at many seminal occasions of my life at that time). It only took one year at college to appreciate just how spoiled rotten I had been the previous eighteen years: Moms ran a tight ship and I was never once without toilet paper, toothpaste, breakfast cereal or any of the other million things a typical bratty American from that generation (any generation?) so easily takes for granted. And that is a point unto itself: it’s because you take those things for granted that you were well tended by your caretakers. I had also come to a better understanding that my parents weren’t nearly as clueless as I often suspected whilst a snot-nosed teenaged shithead. Or, as Mark Twain observed with his inimitable elan: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” In other words, you grasp that your father was the quarterback, after all. But you also become cognizant that your mother was the coach, cheerleader and locker partner; she covered all the proverbial bases, enabling you to run around them even as you thought you were just floating on air.

Everyone remembers when, as a kid, on Mother’s Day they would inquire “How come there isn’t a Kid’s Day?” And the response would be, “Every day is kid’s day.” Most people who have lived a single day in the real world come quickly to understand how true that old cliche actually is (those extremely well-raised didn’t need to wait that long for this epiphany to come, and I remain grateful to count myself among these). A year or two punching the clock, paying bills, cleaning up one’s messes (the literal and especially the figurative ones) and generally attaining the independent status that one strove so single-mindedly to attain is sufficient impetus for reflection. Not just an appraisal of how impossible it will be to repay the investment made, counted in money, time, affection and concern, but a recognition of what was really at stake: how astonishing and selfless it is for these same people who put in all those hours and all that effort to effectively enable you to become your own person. The best gift a parent can give you is to love you enough to allow you to not be just like them; to encourage you to be whoever you are destined to be.

I had the opportunity to deliver the eulogy at my mother’s funeral (which, incredibly, occurred only a few months after this photo was taken, at my cousin’s wedding in June 2002). I remembered her as fondly as I could which was easy to do; I tried to convey what she meant to me, which was difficult. Everything that is good about me is because of my mother. That was the line I used to open and close my remarks, and looking back, I still reckon it’s the most succinct way of illustrating the role she played–and continues to play–in my life. I tried to steer away from sentiment that was self-absorbed (this was an occasion to remember and celebrate my mother’s life, not how it affected me) or to unintentionally overlook the loved ones gathered whose lives she touched in so many indelible ways (or to give my old man, my boy, inadvertent short-shrift by ostensibly giving his wife all the credit for the heavy lifting he had also done), but as the chosen speaker, her only son, it was my opportunity, and obligation, to pay her the ultimate compliment. It was the most honest and appropriate thing I could do. And so I made mention of Pops (at whose surprise 60th birthday I had given a toast less than a year earlier), and I observed the many individuals; the family, friends and yes, strangers to whom she mattered and whose lives were enriched by her compassion and indefatigable empathy. And I remembered that she was the one who nurtured, and encouraged, my early love of music. That she seldom said no if I wanted to buy a new book, even if it was going to sit on top of the big stack of books I’d already accumulated (she knew I’d get around to it, and I always did). How she told me B’s were as good as A’s so long as I was learning (and even the sporadic C+ wasn’t the end of the world, particularly for those maddening Math classes), how she (and Pops) never missed a single soccer game, swim meet or miscellaneous rite of passage. The way she illustrated, with words but especially with actions, that being a Christian was a fine thing, but acting like one was even better. Or that no matter who I met or eventually married, she was always going to be the first woman in my life. And that by raising me the way she did, she was instinctively preparing me for when she was no longer around, even if that ended up happening a hell of a lot sooner than any of us could stand.

And despite her absence, which remains an inconsolable loss in my life, I am sincere when I tell people I genuinely feel fortunate for the cards I was dealt. How could I not be? And I cry every time I hear “our song” (the great Bob Marley tune originally left off of Catch A Fire, called “High Tide or Low Tide”), but I smile every time I hear “Rocky Raccoon”, which we sang along with a hundred times in the car. And each time I scribble a thought with artistic intent I am inspired by the encouragement she offered, going back to when I was a kid with crayons, coloring outside the lines while listening to The Nutcracker Suite. And I have a special place in my heart for all my friends (and extended family members) who have become wonderful mothers themselves, and I see my mother alive in the looks they give the children they love with all their being. And I nod my head in affirmation knowing her loss made our family stronger and helped ensure that we would have one another’s back the rest of the way.

“How do you get over the loss?” That was the question I asked an old girlfriend who lost her father when she was a teenager. “You don’t,” she said. And hearing that you can understand, and appreciate the sentiment; that you could never heal from that type of heartbreak. But one has to experience it to comprehend the inexplicable ways this truth is an inviolable aspect of our existence: it’s worse than you can conceive, but if you’ve been one of the lucky ones, it’s also more redemptory and beautiful than you might have imagined. Mostly, you accept that a day will never go by when you don’t think of the one you loved and lost. And, of course, that you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Every day is kid’s day, and who could hope to change that?

Every day, for me, is now Mother’s Day. And on my birthday I don’t celebrate myself so much as acknowledge, and appreciate, the one who got me here.

 

Take a guy.

Let’s say he is about my age: old enough to own a place and pay almost all his bills sometimes; young enough to understand that he is not getting any younger. Add a dose of fresh alienation—not enough to be unhealthy, of course, but enough to enable him to function in a world full of imbecility and indifference and all those unattainable happily-ever-afters awaiting him on the other side of his flat screen TV. Take this guy and give him enough stability so that he has no excuses, but plenty of alibis. Most likely, he is utterly average in every regard, except for the fact that, unlike almost everyone he knows, he is aware of it. Finally, add the oncoming collision of the big 4-0 and there’s no choice but to buckle up and insert all applicable clichés, complacent epiphanies and the half-earned angst that are smirking impatiently, just offstage.

It’s time to pay tribute. Yes, at this point it would seem appropriate to tip the bottle and pour out some beer for our dead homeboy. But we don’t because we are not drinking beer. Also, he is not dead, and we are not in a music video or even a bad movie, and above all, we are too cynical, self-conscious, or married to imitate such affected gestures. Unless, of course, we were being ironic, but it’s too early in the evening for that type of commitment, so we’ll stick to doing what we do best: retelling stories that never happened exactly the way we insist on remembering them. No harm done, a little bullshit and bourbon on the rocks never hurt anyone. Besides, I am increasingly aware that it is because these stories are so obviously embellished that we need them to be true. Add a few hours and more than a few drinks and once again, here we are: backs to the future, looking in the mirror for someone who should be standing alongside us.

This is not exactly what they mean by flashing back, and yet I’m trying to stay in the moment, knowing I can if I try hard enough. But first I need to make sense of that old saying, how does it go? If I knew now what I didn’t know then? No. If I knew then what I did know, now? I don’t know. I’m here, but now—and not for nothing—I’m recalling the mistake I did not make, almost two decades ago.

Remember Love Boat? Not the TV show, but a blunt laced with PCP, also known as angel dust. The boat. This was the holy grail of illicit drugs, and considering the fact that all drugs were illicit, period, even a dumbass underclassman knew this was filed under Fucked Up. I didn’t know much but I knew that alcohol was off limits, marijuana was out of the question, and Love Boat was officially off the charts. This was the stuff that longhaired actor took an accidental hit of and then quickly found himself perched on a rooftop, trying to fly (or perhaps that was the surreptitious tab of acid in his fruit punch, same difference). We saw that movie in the ‘70s and it scared us even straighter. Nevertheless, every so often when we were shooting hoop after school, some older brothers would show up, commandeer the court and show us all the things we knew we could never do. Inexorably, one of them would see us seeing them, raise his eyebrow and say the dangerous words: “You lookin’?”

Most likely, the question never presumed a possible transaction, and was more an offhand (but not ironic, because nobody knew what irony was at that age) way of reminding us, at once, who they were, who we were, and most significantly, who we would never be. But some other kids were in on the action; they had to be. Why else would we constantly be on the receiving end of these perfunctory solicitations? Eventually, we agreed that it could only be one group of unusual suspects: the freaks. Older students, the rock concert t-shirt wearing army of outcasts; the rebels who at one time had been athletes, or nerds, of drama dorks, and then popped through the pimple of post adolescent purgatory and found themselves born again as deadbeats. The ones, we belatedly recognized, who saw through the self-immolation of Izod shirts and feathered hair, the ones who shirked intramural activities and the safety of numbers, the ones who could no longer belong to any Key Club that might accept them as members. The ones who never even got hassled by the jocks because they simply were not worth the aggravation; a cafeteria-style ass kicking would not earn a striving sophomore any status. These were the guys, everyone knew, who dared to flick their middle fingers at student governance, decorum and the future: they were going nowhere and seemed to be in a real hurry to get there. These were the ones, we decided, who had the audacity, when the brothers asked if they were looking, to say yes.

Just say no? Remember, this was a world before computers and consoles and cell phones and even CD players. Not an innocent era, by any means, but a time when some of us read books because we couldn’t think of anything better to do. A time when growing pains were the physical kind and the one thing everyone agreed upon was that we couldn’t get older quickly enough. A time, most likely, that comprised the formative years so many adults feel an almost unbearable longing for, mostly because whatever it is they were feeling can’t ever be felt that way again. Sentimental? Shit, I still find myself craving the same things I hoped for then: a pretty girlfriend (remember going steady?), a decent report card (also known as a performance review), to be considered cool by the types of people who are considered cool, and mostly to be accountable, at last, and free to do whatever the hell I want when I grow up. Someday.

We didn’t know how much we did not know, but we knew what everyone else seemed to understand. Such as, the U.S.A. could kick some Soviet ass if it had to (ask Rocky), that God existed (and, assuredly, was a Capitalist God), that he who dies with the most toys wins, and we all knew exactly what we’d become after graduating from our first or second choice colleges: some of us would be practicing L.A. law, some of us would be sporting Top Gun bomber jackets, some of us would get wealthy on Wall Street, and the rest of us would have the old-fashioned types of jobs that you could actually describe in one or two words. What we were not going to be was forgettable. We did not know where we were headed, but we were emboldened by an instinctual understanding that our parents’ wallets would insulate us from too much reality, or at least break our fall if any of us tripped climbing up that American ladder.

Not quite everything we believed turned out to be wrong, and life is usually kind enough to wait a while before it reveals some of the answers to questions you never knew needed to be asked. But even before graduation we were disabused of at least one illusion that took us down a notch or two: it wasn’t the freaks that dared not to just say no, it was us. 

Not me, you understand. I was too chickenshit, or at least too Catholic, to dabble in the dust, and while I reckon there was a vague contentment underlying that decision, I am even more relieved, looking back. See, I went to college, and I saw the reefer (smoked it too), smelled the shrooms (ate them too), saw the unsnorted remnants of white powder under the noses of blissed-out fraternity brothers (fortunately for all involved, I did not have the funds for that type of fun). And, obviously, the alcohol. None of us were ever the same after those first dozen or so hangovers: no matter what it dished out, we kept going back to the unwell, looking for something to…what, exactly? Provide pleasure? Instigate adventure? Derail inhibition? Seek fleeting solace from the cold, cruel world? Sure, all that crap, but something else as well. There is a reason the most expensive advertisements are still allowed to promote an activity that kills more kids each year than any boogeyman on amphetamines—or Nancy Reagan for that matter—could ever conceive in their darkest dreams. There is something that alcohol almost, but never quite delivers, that keeps everyone in the game. Just like back in the day, there’s safety in numbers, and it would sure seem Un-American to cast aspersions on something so many people need to believe in.

Nevertheless, I saw a handful of buddies brought low, churned up and rehabbed before they turned twenty-one, and every year at least one friend or acquaintance finally finds something else to look forward to on Friday afternoons. What I’m saying is, I’m lucky. Because I never pushed my luck and ended up biting something that bit back and wouldn’t let go. But if I knew then, what I know now, I may have unwittingly joined a few of the guys—who got better grades than I did—when they took trips across town in a borrowed car.

Get this: not only were some of the guys we knew in on the action (and for the record, as far as they knew the freaks never touched the stuff—more irony wasted, like everything else, on the young), their escapades were abetted by a teacher. Put another way, a teacher at our school was paying them to make drug runs. To an adult, today, this shouldn’t seem shocking; indeed, it is practically expected. But that is only because we are too well acquainted with irony, which merely proves that we no longer have the capacity to surprise ourselves, if we ever did. In any event, it turns out that the mastermind of these Love Boat runs was quite possibly the least likely culprit and therefore (in hindsight?) the most obvious. Mr. X., as he was not known, since this is not his name, was at the time—and still, in my mind—ageless, simply an adult, although he could not have been much older than thirty. If this story were depicted in a movie, the car the kids borrowed would have been nice, perhaps ironically nice, instead of the unremarkable piece of shit it actually was. And, crucially, Mr. X. would be played by George Clooney, or a lesser star that still emanates the slick celluloid charisma no real people can ever obtain. In the movie, the teacher would have a tragic flaw: a college football injury that derailed his obvious path to the pros, or some type of self-loathing resulting from a dark secret that he finally confronts in the end. Or something similarly redemptory, and ridiculous. In truth, Mr. X. was a mess—not quite morbidly obese, but working on it with the inimitable dedication of a junk food enthusiast. To look at him, even then, it seemed exceedingly improbable that he was once a varsity wrestler (in another state, in another world) and an offensive tackle. Well, it was a little easier to imagine him as an offensive tackle. And he had the pictures to prove it. Nonetheless, those days behind him, he had really gone to the (hot) dogs, a second-rate high school jock who had peaked at age seventeen, then metastasized into a third-rate high school geometry teacher. At least, looking back, he’d had the educational upbringing (in another state, in another world) to have sufficiently mastered mathematics. Today, after TV and YouTube had their way with him, he would have been fatter sooner, and the best he could have hoped for was teaching P.E., although (again, ironically) the gym teachers are in better shape today then they were then. Hopefully they are dressing better as well.

Even today, it’s difficult to determine which revelation is the most unsettling: that one of our boys was casually smoking Love Boat with older, cooler guys (it was enough that, as a junior, he could hang with the senior wrestlers, the ones who walked through the locker room like Greek gods with acne), that he could dabble without fear of addiction (he could hit it and quit it, precisely what the rest of us, with our after school special sensibilities, were terrified of being unable to do), or that the assistant wrestling coach, and teacher (!), was a more than recreational user. He was crazy, and brazen, enough to loan his car, and his funds, to a group of varsity lettermen so they could cross the bridge into D.C. and get the goods. Or maybe they snuck right across town, in broad daylight, to the basketball court, near a neighborhood that was verboten even before rap music, MTV and guns, were invented.

You know how this story ends: nothing happened (wait for the movie). The star athletes went off to school on scholarships and our boy, we assumed, grew out of his bad habit or, with his willing accomplices removed from the scene of the crimes, had no one to instigate further misdeeds. At least that was the way it seemed, until he stopped coming to school. Mr. X.? Long gone; no idea where, not even worth Googling. Besides, unless he found Christ or Jenny Craig, the smart money says he’s currently kickin’ it in his oversized coffin. Full disclosure: it’s not his fault that I never understood parallelograms or gave a good shit about the Pythagorean Theorem (remember that? Me neither), but he certainly didn’t do much to ameliorate my apathy.

In any event, everyone had plans before graduation; everyone had plans for after graduation as well, but that’s a different story altogether. Some of the guys were still pilfering liquor from their parents’ supply—that eternal fountain of youth; some guys (the smart ones, the lucky ones) were still trying to get laid for the first time before high school ended. Allegedly, some of them succeeded. Some people were busy doing whatever it was everyone did before you could live your entire life online. The rest of us, bored and boring, not knowing enough to be careful what we wished for, felt begrudgingly grateful to stand on the ostensible threshold of adulthood. We posed for pictures, we put on the caps and gowns, and eventually, inevitably, we strolled across that stage.

But one of us wasn’t there that day: our boy, who need not be named, and in the interest of fuller disclosure, was only on the periphery of my circle (that would need to be addressed in more detail for the movie), did not appear in any of the pictures. As it happened, he’d made the transition from underling to ringleader without too much difficulty, and dove headfirst down that rabbit hole. Those of us who weren’t doing the things he shouldn’t have been doing were just as surprised as everyone else when he vanished overnight, like one of the Communist Dissidents we had read about. While we were mostly content to pilfer the occasional beer from our parents’ stash, his folks had already put him on double-secret probation for acts we never knew about. And so one day, just like that, he was gone. We later learned he’d been sent to one of those discreet asylums that only upper-middle class parents and pop stars from the cover of People magazine can afford.

Nobody acknowledged it as we clowned around for the cameras, but his absence was unavoidable, a blemish on our collective accountability. Our friend wasn’t there, but he was with us, his story an uncomfortable reminder of how human we actually were. By not being there, he was ensuring that none of us, in the name of good dumb fun, became unwitting apprentices to the Sorcerer who preys on impressionable punks. That eternal trickster, offering a free line of credit (called Experience) that is recouped later by its alias (called Regret), always with interest. Overflowing with post adolescent pride, we believed we had stared down this malign specter that, with one angel-scented spell, might have sent us careening into an early adulthood. Or, even worse, some of these lives none of us would ever have imagined ourselves growing into.

I am not alone. I have a best friend, who happens to be a dog. He is really good for me, reminding me to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and generally making sure that I get out a few times a day. He walks me whenever he gets the chance. Our favorite time is after work, when we reenter the building and the walls and halls come alive, warm with the savory smells of home-made meals (you can never smell fast food, although that scent lingers in the elevator, as if ashamed to be associated with the honesty, the effort and industry of these prepared productions).
No one sits down to dinner anymore, but all around me, people are sitting down, eating meat loaf, or some sort of roast that has simmered on low heat all afternoon. Maybe there is even a pie prepared for dessert. Maybe, inside someone’s kitchen, it’s still the 1950’s.
And I remind myself that someday, if my cards play me right, I will enjoy a real meal around a table, and experience all that I’ve been missing during these efficient years of isolation. I will clear the table and clean the dishes, I will sit on the couch and take a crack at the crossword, or catch a made-for-TV movie, or go run errands or consult a book of baby names for the offspring on the way, and eventually I will work on improving my bad habits and attempt to overlook my wife’s inadequacies (the quirks that were so endearing in those early days). I will, at last, learn to communicate openly and as an adult. Mostly, I will not be alone.

My dog is a trooper.
He’s never called in sick a single day of his life: up at the crack of dawn every day, including weekends, stretched, eager and anxious to take on the world. Or at least take a walk.
My dog takes his work very seriously, and has succeeded in making more friends than I have. He does not discriminate: men, women, cars, trees, and other dogs—especially other dogs. He wants to meet everyone, and he patrols the neighborhood like it’s his job. I, for one, admire his dedication.
Thanks to him, I am on a first-name basis with all the other dogs in my building, though I have a hard time remembering what to call their owners.
Take this guy: an older man (I don’t want to call him an old man), whose name I’ve never gotten around to establishing. I sort of prefer it that way, as he provides me with a mystery I enjoy embellishing. Where most of my neighbors are obviously what they are: mothers, fathers, bachelors, wives, working stiffs, senior citizens, anonymous law-abiding entities, et cetera, this man alone retains, for me and my imagination, an enigmatic air. He wears a wedding band, but I’ve never seen or met his spouse. He is friendly, so much so that it initially took me a while to warm up to him.
Maybe this is the way other people saw my old man. Yes, he is definitely someone’s father: he has rolled up his sleeves to punish, praise, clean, counsel, inspire, admonish, argue, approve, second-guess, support and silence. In short, things I have never done. And I think (I can’t help myself): he is a way I’ll never be.
All of us, of course, are more or less the same: we live, we work, we sleep, we eat, we love, we fight, we forget, we try to remember, we think, we wear down and then we die. In this regard, all living creatures are more alike than not.
But humans are different.
We know who we are, so we wonder (we can’t help ourselves) things like: What has that man done that I’ll never do? What has he seen that I’ll never see? What parts of the world he once lived in are gone forever, replaced by newer things that younger people, not yet born, will wonder about, in time?
I think:
If I had lived in the ‘50’s, that man might have been a spy; a professor, a pedophile (I would have called him a pervert), a recluse, a con artist—but above all, he most certainly would be a Communist.
If I had lived in the ‘50’s, I would eat an egg for breakfast each morning with either bacon or sausage or sometimes both, I would also eat pastrami sandwiches, drink whole milk and smoke endless streams of cigarettes, I would be father to as many children as God (most certainly a Capitalist God) saw fit to provide, I would live closer to my parents, I would miss church service seldom on Sundays and never on Holy Days of Obligation, I would know how to fix my toilet and sink if they dripped, I would never have had a shirt professionally pressed, I would drive an American car and never wear a seat belt, I would have a job that I could actually describe in one or two words. I would be, quite conceivably, content.
My dog is content. One thing is for sure: if my dog lived in the 50’s, he would be content, just as he would be content fifty years from now. After all, all dogs want is other dogs (I think my dog thinks I’m a dog). People aren’t like that, which, I suppose is why people love dogs. The older man and I love our dogs, and for a few seconds we watch them sniff each other.
“Hot enough for ya?”
“Yeah well, it’s the humidity!”
(To ourselves we say this).
Then we go our separate ways, exchanging pleasantries.
I say: Have a nice day.
Likewise, he replies, and then smiles. Not to mention a nice life.
I smile, and then walk away, still smiling. Who the hell does this guy think he is, saying something like that? How dare he say something like that. Unless he means it. No one says something like that. Unless they are actually, inconceivably content.
I’m still smiling, but then a sobering thought sideswipes me (again): That man is a way I’ll never be.

My dog is mad at me.
I can’t blame him.
He knows the rules: I don’t come home, I’m in violation of the contract (two meals, a bowl at least half full with half-clean water, and a minimum of three walks a day), so he is entitled to cut loose all over the kitchen floor, or even the couch.
But my pal is a team player; he has character. He held it. For me. And, I reckon, for himself; after all, it’s his house too.
His tail does its thing; I’m surprised he doesn’t take flight, and he is happy. Dogs cannot suppress that genuine love and honesty. But then, after the walk (and a piss that would make a drunken mule proud) he recovers and reverts to character: not taking the treat (Who wants a biscuit? I say. Not me, his back says), sitting on the other side of the room. Normally this would be my opportunity, my obligation, to win him over; shower him with affection and praise, but I can’t. I just don’t have it in me. The poor guy, he probably thinks I’m ignoring him. But I’m simply too hung over to address this injustice.
Eventually, inevitably, he comes around. The little wags every time I look over, the overtures of amiability, his minuscule capacity for indignation already exceeded. He follows me into the kitchen, and as I look around—still too ashamed to directly acknowledge him—searching for distraction, the oddly recurring thought once again arises: Can I possibly be the only person afraid to utilize the self-cleaning function of my oven? I don’t trust it. I don’t trust anything that makes promises it can’t keep. Then again, if I actually used my oven, this admittedly might be a more enticing feature.
In no time my dog is all over me, drunk from love as well as the fumes seeping through my skin.
I don’t mislead him: the best I’ll be able to offer is space beside me while I doze in and out of recrimination and self-pity. As usual, he has no complaints; happy to receive whatever I will give him. Dogs, after all, are not unlike humans: they need food and water, and shelter and support. But they also need love.

My dog punches the clock, chasing after creatures he has no chance of catching. He chases squirrels the way his owner chases women: blindly and brazenly, but with no idea what he’d actually do if he ever caught one.

Take off all your clothes, I say.
No, she laughs.
“Be careful,” I say as she gets down on the carpet to entertain my dog’s playful overtures. “He’s a lady-killer.”
“Like his daddy?” she asks, making it too easy, or not easy enough, depending on how it all undresses.
“Hardly,” I say, reaching for the bottle of wine that is equal parts incriminating and inspiring—mostly, and most importantly, it is empty.
“You two make a cute couple,” I say, equal parts innocent, honest, envious.
“Why don’t you join us?”
Put on all your clothes, I do not say.
“Are you drunk,” she says.
“Never,” I lie.
“Am I drunk?” she asks.
“Not enough,” I sigh.
“What did you say,” she whispers.
“Nothing,” I lie.
Take off all your clothes, she laughs.
Okay, I say.

When he was a puppy, my dog would whimper anytime I was out of sight. All through his infancy, all he seemed to want was to share space with me, inhale the air I exhaled, flirt with my feet with his nose. As he settled into the dog-eared years of adolescence, we got into a good groove: aside from the inevitable, and understandable, teenage tantrums; he was everything I could ever have hoped for. Once he was old enough to drive he would sometimes scold me: if I stayed out all night or stumbled through another substandard evening stroll, or when I collapsed from exhaustion after throwing a toy once or twice, he conveyed his disenchantment by setting up camp across the room, safely out of reach, to put his head between his hands and sulk. And stare. You can always tell when a dog is unhappy because the rest of the time they are either ecstatic or asleep.

Bang: Another day ends with a whimper and all of us respectable citizens retire to our tents and our troubles.
My dog is waiting impatiently, and greets me with his usual eagerness. If there is one utterly amenable character in my world, it’s him: he treats me better on a bad day then I could ever pay another human being to approximate.
Outside, the cold does not dishearten him and I remind myself to take notes.
A siren sounds and he howls, ostensibly in approval. Being a human, I think on more practical levels: A siren, at night, really does sound like a woman screaming. Or a man for that matter. And perhaps that’s the point.
Overhead, sleet sizzles on the imperious power lines, flirting with disaster each time it touches the warm anger that can kill it. Anxious electricity is all around me, earning its money like everything else.
And the cold—the confidence of the cold—subduing the air which has that heartwarming wood-burning scent of banked fires; which is odd, as my building only has gas fireplaces.
Up above, the moon glows, brazen and bright, kept warm (from behind) by a sun I can’t see. Suddenly, my dog becomes very excited, as he is known to do, and I nicely yank him back on the leash, as I’m known to do. When I can’t contain him, and he strains to get where he just was to the point of making loud choking noises, I finally survey the scene and see what he is so enthralled with: a damn trash bag. Half buried in the filthy slush, there must be a discarded bone; I can actually see a bone. A bone that looks a lot like a skull. As my dog sniffs ecstatically around me, I look down carefully and finally understand something that used to be alive is being cruelly preserved in this frigid mound. I disappoint my dog and pull him away from his discovery, and remind him that treats await both of us inside.

Her: “What about you?”
Me: “What about me?”
“Do you drink too much?”
“I’m just trying to avoid anything in my life right now that could be considered a cliché.”
“But you do drink too much.”
“Possibly.”
“Well, that’s kind of a cliché, right?”
“True, but so is sobriety.”
“I’m not talking about anything that insane, but how about moderation?”
“That’s the worst cliché of all!”
“Good point…”
“I reckon I’m in okay shape for the shape I’m not in.”
“Well, you have to settle down sometime.”
“I don’t have to do anything of the sort.”
“Do you want children?”
“I don’t know…I can’t imagine my life without children.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I can’t imagine my life with children.”
“I know. If we didn’t need to have jobs to pay the bills we would probably agonize every day over which job to take…”
“Exactly. You just do what you have to do and have faith that it’s meant to be, you make it right, one way or the other.”
“So all it takes, apparently, is faith.”
“Exactly.”
“So what do you do when you don’t have faith?”
“You get a dog.”

Music always helps.

Here are representations from each of the five major food groups (jazz, blues, reggae, classical, rock) that are unceasingly able to make me happy, or at least happier. Music is the one miracle you can always count on, and I can always count on these five easy pieces.

A.M.: Departure

Early, at the airport.

Look around: some of the pretty people, many of the mediocre, and the rest of us, all sizes and shapes: men trying to look like the human mannequins who sold them their suits, women with bodies stolen from a Robert Crumb cartoon.

            I can’t help overhearing the woman across from me who has not discovered her indoor voice, agitated and unabashed, wire growing out of her ear to prove she is not, in fact, arguing with herself. To tell the truth, she is yelling—there is simply no way around it.

            And look at this joker, walking in purposeless circles, mouth in constant motion above the ice cream cone he’s carrying in the hand not holding his carry-on. Not everything I just described is accurate, I realize, as I see how he’s sizing up the innocent bystanders: his circles are serving a purpose after all—he is seeking out the amateurs. I myself am more or less an amateur, but I’m not as much of an amateur as he hopes I am. Direct eye contact is out of the question, yet I’m practically daring him to say something just so I can ignore him. After all, if 9/11 gave us anything, it ensured that all the actually dangerous people now avoid airports. But then, there’s no reason to invite annoyance. Just because he can’t hurt me doesn’t mean he can’t kill me with kindness.

            Some of the people in airports are leaving town to escape their problems; some are heading toward their problems; and the rest are either unaware or unwilling to accept that they are the problem. These are the otherwise inscrutable citizens who shout into cell phones even as they bump and grind down the unfriendly aisle.

            As I warily edge my way forward, trying not to touch or eyeball anyone, I am certain the capricious airline gods have assigned me a middle seat between the ice cream man and the woman whose main problem seems to be herself.

 

No one should be happy to be on an airplane at 7 AM. No one should be happy to be awake at 7 AM. Unfortunately for me, it appears that the only two people happy to be awake, in the air, and alive at 7 AM are on this same flight. Sitting directly in front of me. Speaking. Loudly.

What could anyone possibly have to say, to someone else, on a plane, at 7 AM?

Like virtually all of us, they are required by work to be here. Unlike virtually all of us, they are inexplicably tickled about it. And there is only one conceivable excuse for being delighted to be on a business trip at 7 AM: money. To be fair, they don’t seem to be talking about money—yet—they are talking about love. Then again, if they are actually enjoying this ritual, love is just a metaphor for money.

And then, before smug self-approval allows me (for once) to shut my eyes in peace, there is the maddening intrusion of alternate explanations. Perhaps this exultant young man in front of me is in the unfathomable thrall of fate. Perhaps, against all possibility, and in accordance with the inviolable intricacies of Cliché, this fortunate fellow has met the stranger meant to be his soul mate.

And then: perhaps if I did not always sit here, moping and miserable, I would meet my soul mate one of these mornings, enabling me, finally, to make some sense out of these strictly-business excursions. After all, isn’t this how it always happens?

(Dad, how did you meet Mom?

You’d never believe it, but we met on a plane!)

Why shouldn’t that be me?

It could.

And yet. It’s not likely. After all, any time I’m on a plane at 7 AM, the smart coin is on the certainty that I’ll once again opt to remain silent, in my shell, eyes ironed shut, wishing I was anywhere else in the world.

 

Up in the air, alive, the sun shows off all it can see, up here where to be or not to be gets decided every second. I look around at befuddled businessmen, suppressing panic attacks because they can’t use their cell phones. The woman next to me, hunched over her laptop, keeps snatching suspicious glances in my general direction. I am, of course, reading what’s on her screen, but what does she expect? The stewardess stares me down sweetly, daring me to accept a cup of coffee that was most likely brewed last week, reheated this morning, and has spent the last several hours roiling around in its airtight cask, asphyxiating on its own fumes. Politely, I decline.

 

Just as I’m drifting off into a cantankerous catnap, the pilot interrupts the silence to announce that air traffic control has not given us the go-ahead for landing, whatever that means. Even up here you can’t catch a break, even the unfriendly skies are backed up, impeding forward progress, inviting exasperation. Even up here the clouds won’t part until the big money has cleared customs and changed hands.

 

In the air less than an hour, there is collective anxiety amongst the people who can’t plug something in. The second tires hit the tarmac it quickly becomes a contest to see who can turn on their phone first. How did people exist in the world before cell phones? Before e-mail for that matter? Before computers? I lived in that world. Recently. And I have no idea.

Touchdown. Everyone leaps to their feet, elbowing each other for the honor of not getting off the plane first. I pretend to be patient and enjoy making the woman next to me, who obviously can hardly stand not having her portable computer opened and available, wait her turn. After a few near rumbles, shouting matches and rugby scrums in the aisle, I stoically join the clustered masses on the concourse, reluctant but ready to throw myself on the mercy of the big apple that will chew me up and spit me out before I even know what hit me.

 

Welcome to LaGuardia, the man moving past me does not say. I’m in too much of a hurry to stop (like always, like anyone else), but there is something so familiar about him that I’m compelled, despite everything I’ve learned, to pause and look behind me: he is still there, off to the side, shabbily clad, immediately recognizable by his contrast to everyone around him; he wants to approach one of these businessmen, but all of them are walking too fast, too deliberately, too purposefully.

Automatically, the doors move aside and frigid air earnestly greets everyone headed its way. It takes about five seconds (as always) to feel the cold and then the money dread: if it weren’t for the money, it wouldn’t take much—in a strange city, lost, alone. Cold. Broke. That’s how shit like starvation and sleeping on grates gets started. Quiet in the corners, huddled under bridges, working the frenzied crowd for a friendly face, hoping for the handout that never comes.

 

There is only way to get through mornings like this: drink heavily. Right now the coffee and orange juice are kicking in, caffeine battling c-vitamins, engaged in a Dostoyevskian struggle for my soul. Or, at least, my nervous system. A million little meetings imploded into one agenda, it becomes an endurance test to see who will blink first and ask for a bathroom break, or delegate more action items for the unfortunate underlings lucky enough not to be here. Mostly I try to maintain eye contact with the most important people and stifle the incessant anxiety that someone might ask my opinion or a question I actually know how to answer. Not unimpressed, I watch possible futures unfolding from the projector, purgatory via PowerPoint.

 

P.M.: Arrival

 

These day trips ask a lot of you, almost so much that you find yourself fondly reminiscing about the good old days you never knew, the days when horse-drawn carriages signified cutting edge business travel, days when people might have fantasized about a few hundred miles in less than an hour, not anticipating planes that make your mind feel microwaved.

Outside. Of course the line for taxis is indefensible. One look at this mess and it seems safe to wager that it will take longer to get a cab than it just took to fly a few hundred miles. On the bright side, the cab and its driver are both clean and smell inoffensive, even nice, even (dare I say it?) sexy. And yes, it’s an odious—smelling—stereotype, but until we cease to be surprised by a painless experience in a pleasant-scented cab, we’ll continue to appreciate them as the exception and not the rule.

            I don’t wear the seat belt in cabs—cabs never crash; besides, why attract attention? Why give potential tragedy the time of day?

            Moving fast—too fast for any circumstance other than getting me where I needed to be, and I wasn’t even in a hurry—each person he passes and each grunt of approval I offer signify the following, mutually understood assurance: every car in the rear view is another ten cents tacked on to the twenty percent tip he’s already got working. We each appreciate the rules: if I was in the car beside us—if I was anywhere on earth except his backseat—we’d be mortal enemies, but as it stands, we are on the same team, this is our war and we’ll endure much and suffer stoically and make it to the promised land, one man together.

            True, some cab drivers don’t want to talk; (some don’t speak your language, some may not even speak) but some want to talk, some want to talk very much indeed, and will initiate the action and then wait, like de-fanged cobras, ready to pounce, aggressive yet harmless, at any opportunity. In fact, with some folks you get the vibe that they are so starved for conversation, solidarity, or just that elusive human touch, that they would not only waive your fare, but pay you if you’d let them pull over and shoot the shit; or even better, slide into some bar and order a round of anything on the rocks, or best, take you to their modest but clean and adequate abode, where their plain but polite wife would whip up some of the best home-cooking you could never pronounce or even describe other than to say it was as impossible as the entire incident. In sum, it’s unlikely.

            And yet, they are out there all the same, waiting.

 

Am I sleeping? No, but I can see a building that I’ve never noticed before, waving to me from the side of the road. It wants me to notice, as if I’m not going to notice. Office buildings, especially ten-story monstrosities, do not just pop up overnight, do they? Even in this town, where anything is possible, this couldn’t be happening. But there it was: people, who had presumably been up and at ‘em since before the sun came up, streaming in from the three story parking garage, putting in their time before they’ll enjoy a well-earned rest: dinner, maybe a cocktail or two and several hours of somnambulant sit-coms before the nightly newscasters lulled them to sleep.

Sleep. Somehow while I’d been asleep, the dirty work of industry had struck again. Overnight, it seemed, a miracle of the modern age had occurred: clandestine plans had been approved, blueprints implemented, construction commenced. Trees had been felled, brick and mortar meticulously amassed, offers had been made, salaries negotiated, moving vans hired, new houses occupied, paychecks deposited, kids sent to imprudently priced daycare, new dentists and family doctors consulted, second children conceived, extramarital affairs instigated, divorce papers served, summer softball leagues formed, cutbacks announced, departments laid off, stock options doled out and quickly cashed, inestimable hours and dollars spent on alcohol, cigarettes, dangerous as well as non-addictive drugs, pornography—always the pornography—and unused health club memberships.

Industry and big money are all about initiative; they don’t sleep until the job is done. And the job, of course, is never done.

Cooked on the surface but still raw inside, it’s all in a daze work as the cab carries me down the home stretch through disorienting yet familiar streets. Survival suburban-style; a metropolis in transition, trying its best to live up to the image it was designed to imitate—sprung from the minds of forward-thinking people who are trying to recreate the past. On the corner high school punks stand beside a phone booth, making no calls; a quick right turn and I’m feeling the money dread as we cruise past several blocks of four car families. Being outside the city is safer, particularly if you prefer the sound of crickets to cop sirens. Eventually, I am deposited in the middle ground of this middlebrow town, and for lack of any other options, I am relieved.

And yet. This is supposed to happen later, with wife and kids and a basement to be banished to after hours. I’ll deal with that later. I think.

My front door is the one mystery to which I have the key, but for some reason I still feel as though I’m sneaking up on a stranger every time I return from a trip; I’m not sure who I expect to see, who might be hiding from me, who possibly could have found the way into my modest refuge from friends and memories.

With Pavlovian precision, I make my way to the medicine cabinet and pour myself a bracing plug of bourbon. It’s more than I need or deserve, I think, but I don’t want the bottle to suspect I was unfaithful in another town, waiting for my return flight for instance, in a cramped and crappy airport bar at La Guardia. If this were a movie (I think, mostly in the past, but even today), I would grab my crystal decanter, filled with obviously expensive spirits, and administer that potion the old-fashioned way, needing no ice cubes, especially since I would never get around to drinking it, as it’s only a prop, a cliché. No one reaches for that tumbler these days (except in movies); the question is: did they ever? Even in the ‘50’s? Or has it always been part of the script?

 

On the dissolving horizon the sky looks good enough to eat: orange sorbet on a dark purple plate; overhead black birds want in on the action, circling one another, entwined in their autumnal ritual.

            All around me, innocent leaves are leaping to their deaths, propelled by forces they never asked to understand.

            I step on dead souls blown about by my brother, the wind. I talk to the wind, the wind cannot hear. The wind does not hear (I did not write that).

            I feel sorry for the leaves, obliged to suicide themselves, only days after celebrating the fleet summer of their fall, their full flowering of uncontainable colors, their collective contribution to the teeming vibrancy of a landscape they can’t stay long enough to share.

            The wind speaks: stay out of this, it says.

I Talk to the Wind (King Crimson)