Becky, Bonnie, and Brittney Oh My

Becky, Bonnie, and Brittney Oh my!
(names have been changed to protect the guilty)

It was my 25th high school reunion. I think. I can’t even remember. And it’s too much trouble to find out. The point is: It was a long time after my senior year.

My senior year was good.

I had been an abused and tortured nerd throughout my entire public school experience. Had the term geek been created I could only have aspired to it. This merely worsened with age. Grade school paled in comparison to Junior High. Junior High could only aspire to the gaping black maw of high school. I was ridiculed, mocked, beat up, hounded, and humiliated beyond comprehension. I am, in fact, lucky to be alive.

And then came my Senior Year.

I was one of the finest singers in school. I was in the premiere choral group that traveled all over the world. Members of Concert Choir envied me. I was active in theater as well. In fact, I won the Best Actor Award that year. I was the star. People worshiped me. Even the teachers. I dated the Head Varsity Cheerleader who later became the Prom Queen. Football players scratched their heads in wonder. And undoubtedly said disparaging things.

Senior year was good. I was in no hurry whatsoever to leave that womb of success and adoration. But I had straight A’s. What else could I do?

After we graduated, Becky (the cheerleader/prom queen) and I went to separate colleges, though we lived together for a while. But our love was far too young to bare the heavy weight of separation. Plus she was just a horney slut who couldn’t keep her hands off the college boys.
In addition, she was a better than average actress and had visions of thespian grandeur. As a result she slept with everything that moved in order to fulfill her potential. So despite my noble and best efforts, having sucked the life right out of me, and not in a good way, she threw me aside like a spoiled vegetable on the garbage heap of love.

She dumped me.

Of course it is the grief stricken male who most often carries a torch down through the years. When a woman is finished, she’s finished. It’s a switch. It’s ON or it’s OFF and when it’s OFF there is nothing, NOTHING you can every do to turn it on again.

Break a man’s heart, on the other hand, and, if you’re cute, he’ll still fuck you.

But I digress.

^V^V^V^V^V^

Twenty five years later, or thereabouts (see the opening paragraph), I was financially sound and happily married to my second wife who knew all about Becky. I had regaled her with stories of my awkward years, culminating in that one splendid burst of senior glory. And, in all modesty, I had gone on to be at least moderately successful. I had a good job making music. I was respected in the community. Existence was not bad.

And so with the appropriate amount of pride my adorable wife and I walked across the street to the up-scale country club where my high school reunion was to be held. I drank. I ate. I drank. I schmoozed. I laughed. I drank. I’m quite certain people admired me from afar.

And then I saw her across the room.

We had not communicated for years. I had not even thought she would be there. Why would someone so talented and so successful bother with a high school reunion? Last I heard she was working her way up the Hollywood ladder. By way, I could only assume, of the Hollywood mattress. She told me about a couple of big names herself.

But I digress.

But there she was.
I said, “Oh my god,” before I could even stop myself.

She was almost perfectly round. Virtually the same dimensions vertically and horizontally.
In fairness, she was less than five feet tall, so it didn’t take much to achieve equality.

“Oh my God.”
“What?” my tiny, cute, well dressed wife asked.
“That’s Becky,” I nodded in the direction.
Pause…
“Becky the girlfriend?” (Skeptically. Staring.)
“Yes.”
Pause……
“The cheerleader - prom queen?”
“Yes.”
Pause…..
And then, bless her heart, she laughed right out loud.

So did I.
And it got even better, depending on your definition of “better.”

I walked over to Becky. We hugged. We talked. We acted like long lost (platonic) friends. What I did not say was….“You changed my life. As I look back over the years, you are one of the most significant people I have known. You changed me. Or rather, I changed because of you and I want to thank you. I loved you. In some way, I probably still do. I think I always will.”

I did not say that.
It’s probably just as well.

I introduced my wife. She introduced her husband, a paint salesman ten years her senior. She called him……to this day I can barely fathom it…..she called him “Father.”

“Father, I’d like you to meet my old friend Bruce.”
And so on.
Her husband!
“Father!”

My wife, who would have slapped me silly if I ever called her “Mother,” and I laughed all the way home. We still laugh.

V^V^V^V^V^V^V^

But that night, after the lights were out, and I was alone with my own mortality, I felt it.
It wasn’t so much an existential crisis. It was more of a tickle. That gnawing fear……
Have I changed like that? Am I to my old self as she is to hers?
No, I decided. I can see in the mirror that I haven’t changed that much.

But what about inside? Have I changed? Have I sold out? Am I just a comic book version of all the things I ever wanted to be? It wasn’t just the weight. One could be forgiven that. It was who you have to be to allow that kind of change, and then to forgive yourself for it. And to call your husband….”father.”

And even IF I had not changed - (And how could I, on the inside looking out, ever be sure of that?) - how could SHE change that way? How could she be someone so different than I thought she was? How could I have been so wrong? It felt like someone had died. Someone I loved. I wanted her back in my memory the way she was. I wanted the memory of myself, when I was with her, back the way it was.

Just a tickle, really.
A little existential tickle.

I shrugged it off.
Then came Bonnie.

^V^VV^V^V^V^V

Chronologically, Bonnie predates Becky. Bonnie was my starter girlfriend. She allowed me to experiment on her and refine what would become some killer-ass technique when it comes to women.

But I digress.

Bonnie and I went to rival high schools. We met at church.

Now that right there is a warning sign, believe you me. NO relationship with its seeds planted initially in the weed-choked garden of the church, ANY church, will EVER amount to good. Trust me. I am an expert on this. I met my first wife at church, roughly the same time I met Bonnie who turned out to be a minor inconvenience with enough pay-off to make it worth the grief. The first wife, on the other hand, was a long term, unmitigated, financial, emotional, and spiritual train wreck from which there was recovery only after years of putting my therapists’ kids through school. So I know what I’m talkin’ about here.

Bonnie and I experimented, and it was fun. It was exciting. First hand-holding. First kiss. First etc. My heart pounded and I thought “Oh my god, no one has ever felt like this before and we are so meant for each other and I can’t believe the world doesn’t feel the way we do.”

The thing about puppy love……is that it’s real for the puppy.

She introduced me to marijuana. My first high was with Bonnie. We got in lots of trouble together and I don’t regret one solitary minute of it. But………

We eventually went our separate ways. Bonnie had issues with men. She loved them. Lots of them. And she liked the way they loved her. One man, at least the one man I was at the time, was not enough for her. Eventually she moved away and the other girl from church and I jumped on the marriage train bound for hell.

V^V^V^V^V^

Many years later, around the time of my 25th-ish high school reunion, Bonnie came back into my life ever so briefly.

She called and said she was going to be in town. She lived in Florida and was coming to California for a visit. My afore-mentioned second wife had no problem with this whatsoever and said, “Invite her to dinner.” I did, and arranged to pick her up and bring her over to the house.

It was great to see her. As we drove back I pulled off the road into a parking lot and stopped the car. I got out, went around to her door and opened it. I reached down for her hand and helped her out of the car.

“What are you doing?“ She asked.
“I just wanted to kiss you,” I said, “and I knew this would be the only chance to do it.”
So we kissed.

On the way home she told me why she was in California visiting family. Her husband had found pictures of her with another man. Recent pictures. She had kept them in a shoe box under their bed.

“That was dumb,” I said. “……..keeping the pictures under the bed.”
“Yeah,” she said.

It was reassuring, actually. She hadn’t changed a bit.

She returned to Florida. She and her husband worked things out I guess. It was before email and more difficult to keep in touch, though I’m not sure we would have anyway.

And then, several years later, my now former wife called and said she had seen Miriam’s name in some Baptist newspaper. She had gone to be pastor of a church in Texas and could be contacted at…...etc.”

So…..I called her.

We talked for almost an hour. Mostly about her. After our visit so many years ago, upon her return to Florida, she had become a counselor. She landed a job working in a clinic and been content to live out her days in God’s Waiting Room. But then her husband wanted to move to Texas to be closer to his parents and off they went. She got a job at a large, non-denominational church as a counselor. And now she has worked her way up to being the Pastor. Not to do-ing the Pastor but to actually being the Pastor. She loves it. 5,000 people in the congregation. She ministers to her flock. They want her. They need her. They love her. And she has the power…….to cast out demons.

That’s what she said.
“I call up demons and cast them out. I heal people.”

OMg…………………………………………………………………………..

V^V^V^V^V^V^

In fairness, Bonnie was never intelligent. She was smart. But she was never intelligent. And she was certainly never talented. So it’s hard to take her vision of the world seriously. She was always a ditz. I knew it even back then. But she was a sweet ditz, in a conniving, underhanded, deceitful sort of way. And I loved her for that. At least for a while.

And after all, how seriously can you take ANY church with a female Pastor? The Catholics are the wealthiest medieval cult on the planet because they got one thing right. Religion is a male dominated sport now. The Goddess had the good sense to make a clean getaway. She could see the whole thing was going south and decided to get out while the getting was good. Before her reputation tanked, like her Successor’s has!

And one more thing……….
When we talked, Bonnie said this:

“I want to apologize for the way I treated you. I know I hurt you sometimes. I was so young and so immature. Sometimes I made up things I did with other boys and told you just to make you jealous. That was mean and I hope you’ll forgive me.”

It never occurred to me how good it would feel to hear that…………………..

“You know,” I finally said, “that is an incredibly kind thing to say. I suppose you’re right, it did hurt. But I’m betting I was fairly immature as well.”

What I wanted to say was, “You bet it hurt. It hurt a lot. But THANK YOU for saying you are sorry. Because it hurt so much then, the “sorry” means so much now!”

But what would have been the point?

I did, however, say, “I want you to know that of all the relationships I have had in my life you are one of the most significant. I’m happy that you remember enough of it to say you are sorry. I remember it too, fondly, and I’m grateful for the time we spent together.”

And that was that……………..

V^V^V^V^V^V^V^

On the one hand, she’s just as ditsy as she ever was and this is just one more wacko manifestation of her endearingly distorted view of reality.

On the other, she has gone off the deep end and traded what brain she had for a turnip. It is now the turnip, surgically implanted in her head that is making decisions and running her life. The only logical conclusion is that ONE of us is bat-shit crazy and I honestly don’t think it’s me. But, of course, I can’t be sure……………..
Once again I badly miss-judged the long-term character of an intimate relationship.

But either way……….one of the kindest, most generous, most truly loving things ever spoken to me were Bonnie’s words “I’m sorry” and I will always, always remember her for that.

Which in some odd way helps with the existential tour de force that was Brittney.

V^V^V^V^V^V^V^

(Close up of a man dreaming. There is a faint, almost dashing smile.)

I don’t even remember it. But I woke up and instantly realized it had been about Brittney. That in turn prompted me to wonder what had happened to her. I wondered about her all day. I should have left it at that.

V^V^V^V^V^V^V

My first job out of graduate school was teaching music in a four year Baptist school that was essentially a glorified Bible college. That said, there were smart people on the faculty, enlightened thinkers who saw through the dogma which this cult, masking as education, espoused. That made the prison we had chosen for ourselves more bearable. We hung out. We traded stories. Some of us played poker and drank beer. Activities, had they been widely known, which would have resulted in immediate firing. We made the best of our time. In fact, some of those friends never left until their dying day. I saw to it such was not the case with me. When I joked about what a miserable, life-sucking, excuse for a school that wasteland was, I wasn’t kidding.

I was the choral director. I also taught other classes, but it was as choral director that I established my identity. It was a high profile job that required: travel; the ability to play a conservative-good-old-religious-folk room; and a bevy of adoring students who would do exactly what I told them. It was a rush. And I made the most of it.

I was filled with that libido driven energy of a twenty-five year old that boils over into every aspect of life. I worked 60 hours or more a week. I made great music. I lectured. I conducted. I created performance experiences to rival a Second Coming with the original cast.

In juxtaposition, my home life was for shit. My first marriage to the train wreck was coming apart faster than the US economy under a liberal government. So all the focus, energy, and determination that the average person might have expended at home to alter the course of a looming disaster, I invested at school. And the pay-off there was big. I was invincible.

Brittney was my accompanist. I don’t recall if I inherited her or hired her. I also don’t recall how she became my secretary. But she did. And from that moment on we rode that gospel train bound for glory.

Brittney was tall and thin, with thick, dark hair. She wore tight jeans and even tighter tops that accentuated her larger than average breasts. She was articulate, confident, and talented. She was flirtatious without being demure. She radiated sensuality. When she walked into a room, people noticed, especially male people.

Once…. at the beginning……..she opened my desk drawer and said,
“Where’s all your stuff?”
“What stuff,” I said.
“You know pencils, paper clips, scissors, stuff you need to work.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll take care of it,” she said.

She was sitting on my desk when she said it, wearing a very short skirt, legs crossed, and leaning in my direction.

I also don’t remember who kicked it up a notch. Who touched first. Who kissed first. I don’t remember. I wish I did. But soon we were “together,” and as evidence of my besotted immaturity, I didn’t care who knew it. In fact, I wanted people to know it. I was proud of her and I was proud of us. She was everything I had always wanted in a woman and had abandoned. I could not have designed a better partner. Five years younger, hot, especially for me, talented, smart, confident, and experienced.

One night we were out driving around and eventually parked on the top of a hill overlooking the city. We did all the things you would expect, at least as best we could in a car, until eventually I stopped, sat back, and said something to the effect of “I wish we could make love.”
“Why don’t we?” she said, incredulous and amused.
“Now?”
“Sure.”
“Where?”
“Outside on the ground.”
“Really?”
“Why not?”

I could not think of a single reason.

And then, a few weeks later, came Peak Sex.

Once again, with regret, I don’t remember who broached the subject. But at some point the topic was oral sex. I would bet she mentioned it first. In any case, I do absolutely remember that at some point in the conversation, she said, “Sure, I do it for my boyfriend all the time.”

I remember those words.
I will always remember them.

This was before she dumped the boyfriend. Clearly the fact that I was married put a damper on our relationship. But there was no alternative there. If I were to divorce I would lose my job, my house, and a substantial portion of my income. I was not fiscally or psychologically prepared for a divorce. She, on the other hand, had only a boyfriend. I was jealous and wanted her all to myself so eventually the boyfriend went away.
And so it was arranged. We would use the swanky apartment of another student. He was attending GBC (Glorified Bible College) on a tennis scholarship and had the morals of a rabid dog. He used to get stoned before giving me lessons. Frankly when I got stoned, I couldn’t even find the tennis court. But he was a world class player and I’m sure drugs made the lesson more entertaining. In any case, he had absolutely no problem loaning us his apartment for the day. It didn’t hurt that Brittney was the one who asked.

The details are not important. What is important is that it was my FIRST time. And it was the most influential sexual event of my life.

Of course I was nervous and this didn’t help. It also did not help that I am a profoundly cerebral person. I live in my head, often to the exclusion of my body. There are voices. Constantly narrating, commenting, evaluating voices that are directing my every move in order to avoid death and avert failure. So when something I have fantasized about for hundreds of years actually happens, it is cause for a great deal of commentary. The voice yelling, “But what if I can’t do it?!” being one of the loudest.

But we did do it, and she was kind, patient and, as far as I could tell, enjoyed every minute of it.

When it was over we lay there. We lay there for a long time. Probably an hour. We talked, though the predominant part of my conversation was merely a periodic repetition of the single syllable, “Wow.”

Eventually I took a shower. The tennis player used Irish Spring. To this day I can’t smell that soap and not be lost in mental revelry for hours. We went to lunch, or dinner, or something. And then I think we may have come back and made love again. I don’t know. But I do know that several days later I was still high as a fuckin’ kite. If I thought I had energy before, now I was on some kind of sexual cocaine. I said something to Brittney about it.

She said, “Yeah, peak sex.”
“What?” I asked.
“Peak sex. My parents told me about it.”

Her parents were both psychologists or therapists or academicians of some kind. Probably why they raised such a liberal, open minded, intelligent daughter who belonged somewhere far better than GBC. It’s also probably why they did not kill me when they found out what I did to their daughter, or, as I’m sure they were enlightened enough to realize, what we did together.

“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a sexual experience that changes your life.”
“You mean the best you’ve ever had?”
“Maybe. More like a spiritual experience.”
“There’s no such thing,” I said with the same tone I might have applied to an argument against space aliens.
She shrugged.

The next day she brought me a magazine article. It was a medical fact. It had been studied. People with advanced degrees had verified it. Peak Sex!

I Google-ed it a few moments ago. You can imagine what I got. Needless to say it had nothing to do with essays on psycho-sexual nirvana. But it was real and I kept the article until it was too painful. As best I can remember: A Peak Sexual experience has the potential to change the way you see the world. It can affect and alter the underlying paradigms which govern your belief system and resulting behavior. Following a Peak Sexual experience reality will never look the same and everything you thought you knew and believed will appear as so much flotsam and jetsam on the shores of your soul.

That was the gist of it, but in more medical terms.

That was my experience and the years since have born it out. There was to this experience some aspect beyond the physical. Something that shattered an already fragile wall between me and what I suspected was a more genuine, realistic view of the world. The wall had been weakened over the years by the usual lectures, conversations, books, and movies. I don’t know whether this final rending of the veil was the result of Peak Sex, or whether the destruction of the barrier is what catapulted it to Peak. Either way, they were simultaneous events from which I have never, thank the gods, recovered.

And that means the story will ALWAYS have a happy ending, no matter what happens.

Brittney set the standard for all the affaires to come. She taught me much of what I know that matters. She introduced me to a much larger and more entertaining world than the one in which I was living. She inspired me. She motivated me. She made me do great work in order to impress her. She loved me unconditionally. She accepted who I was. She helped create who I was.

Or, I did it all and projected it onto her as the muse. Either way, it was damn real to this puppy.

V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^

Eventually, of course, too many of the wrong people found out. Brittney had to leave. She went to live with her parents and attended school in northern California. Missing her almost destroyed me. There was no will to live being created at home. And outside of home I was constantly on the hunt. But the passion was no longer in it.

I missed her so much in fact that I decided to tell the Starter-Wife the truth. That may seem counterintuitive. And in retrospect…….. But I was miserable. I was incapacitated with regret and depression. I had gone from being excited about my life to dreading every day of it. And I simply could not think of any other way out. I couldn’t get a divorce, and spend my life with someone who adored me and made life passionate and exciting. I couldn’t afford it. I certainly didn’t love the Train Wreck. Quite the contrary, I loathed her. But if staying was the only option, and it seemed to be, then the only way of ever being happy again was to make the relationship work.

After a huge fight the harridan flew off to Texas to seek counsel from an ex-boyfriend. In her absence I talked myself into the need to repent and apologize. I could love her and wanted it to work. Needed it to work. We were a team. We belonged together. We had to try.

So when she got off the airplane I greeted her with a single red rose.

“Tell, me the truth, “she said as we walked to the car. “Whatever it is I can live with it. But I have to know what happened. I just don’t want to keep making up stories. If you tell me the truth, whatever it is I will still love you. Did you have an affair with Bittney?”

The pause that followed was ample time for an entire flash-by of a life. And in that eternal instant I was clear that the time left to weigh the pros and cons had come……..and gone. There had been months of that. There was only the cave dwelling instinct to survive. Only a genuine and naïve desire to see life get better, for myself and for those I loved. So I took a chance.

“Yes, I did.”

“I want a divorce, “she said.
Never missed a beat.
Never broke stride.

V^V^V^V^V^V^V^

So life changed anyway, despite my lack of fiscal and psychological preparation. Or, as seems more likely in retrospect, I was quite prepared. Either way, Brittney is the girl most associated with that transition. And the tentacles of that relationship weave their melancholy way through every aspect of my life.

She taught me to keep an apple by the side of the bed so that first thing in the morning you can take a bite and have instant fresh breath…..for kissing. She taught me to tuck my shirt into my underwear to keep it tight and form fitting. She taught me it was possible to be myself with someone and still come out alive and loved. She taught me how incredibly fun it was to really be in love! She showed me you can have sex almost anywhere. She also showed me that sex is better, no matter where you have it, when you genuinely care for your partner. She made everyday an adventure. She loved to please me. I loved to please her.

Of course, all this begs the question:
Why then, when I saw her a couple of years later, and she offered to spend her life with me, did I turn her down?

By this time I was divorced, broke, and unemployed. Just the way I had planned it. So I grasped at a straw. I called her.

She was married. She would meet me as soon as I wanted. I took what little money I had and flew to northern California. We met. We went to a motel. We made love. We walked on the beach. We made love. She told me she would leave her husband and come live with me. And god damn it, I so wanted to do that.

But I was terrified.
I was wrestling with…….issues.

What was I going to do with the rest of my life? How was I going to earn a living? Who was I going to be? What is the meaning of all this? Is there anything that Truly makes it worth prolonging life one more day?

Given the plethora of voices, how could I think rationally enough to I make this kind of decision?

And if I decided “yes,” what if it didn’t work? Not only would I have destroyed her life but what would it do to me to go through that with someone I actually wanted and, more frighteningly, needed? None of my current pain had anything to do with the fact I never saw my ex-wife. That was the one positive thing in my life. But I loved Brittney. What if we destroyed each other? What if the relationship could not take the pressure of what we both had given up?

V^V^V^V^V^V^V

And so I came home.
And slowly, but surely, I pretended to forget.

Then, 30 years later, came the dream.

V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^

As I said, I don’t actually remember it. But the essence of Brittney remained, like incense on the brain. A palpable presence. And, of course, I simply could not leave bad enough alone.

I looked her up on the internet.

You can find almost anyone these days. Even nobodies. So I took a chance. And there she was. I recognized her picture. She had aged, but there was no mistake. I knew the shape of her eyes, the curve of her mouth. She was on Facebook, and I could read about her interests.

Those interests were, among others, K-LOVE radio, a Christian radio station. Bible Gateway, an online searchable Bible. And the California Family Council which serves as the statewide council for Focus on the Family, which in turn provides “relevant Christian advice on marriage, parenting and other topics.”

Now I don’t want to leap to any unwarranted conclusions, but what the fucking hell happened here? Did I enter some twisted, fucked up, mind blowing, one major toke-over-the-line parallel universe? Is this Candid Camera? Am I the unwitting test tube in some government-psychological-torture experiment to see how people will react when something completely mind fucks them?

Or……… is this just my punishment for remembering something good in life? I mean, I try not to dwell exclusively on the painful, wretched, soul crushing parts of it. I cultivate and feed on a few joyful experiences. But is this just Life’s way of saying, “Look what I can do. I can completely alter the past. I can fuck you up anytime I want and when you least expect it. You can’t prepare. You can never be ready. You can never be good and accurate and smart enough. I can always get you. Always.”

Yeah…..I think that’s it.

And so for a few days I was pretty depressed. Depressed enough to start remembering similar incidents with Becky and Bonnie. You remember them from above. And I just figured, well fuck this. I can’t judge character for shit. All those people I thought were wonderful and fun and full of life turned out to be fat, trashy, deluded, religious, freaks of nature. What the hell? And what if the people I love right now turn into that? If I could have been this wrong in the past, who’s to say I’m not wrong about everyone I know right now?! Maybe nothing I believe is True. Maybe it’s all a crapshoot. Life and everything that happens in it is just one big fucking existential, random, no-holds-barred, it-don’t-mean-shit, que sera sera, god-dammed crapshoot!

I fucked myself over this way for several days.
I wrote this article.

And then I realized:
No, it’s worse than that.
It’s True, life does fuck-you-up now and then.
And it’s True, I may still be a bad judge of character when it comes to the people I know.
But all that, and much more, is navigable if you’ve got The Passion. The passion for ANYTHING. But Passion for something in life has to be there to drive you forward through the occasional fuck-ups life throws at you. And I my friends, yay verily I, had come to create a great deal of Passion by carefully sculpting a finely honed version of my past.

It is such a refuge in times of trouble. A memory in which to hide when the present is just too painful. The memory of all the stuff that worked. The complete absence of all the stuff that didn’t. It was Perfect. It was Beautiful. It was Camelot.

And as if that respite were not enough. When I finally emerged from my memory opiates, I thought, “I can do better than what I have now.” And so memories provided inspiration. To create. To strive. To achieve. To do better than now. I did it for the Love Lost. I did it for it for the unobtainable Other. I was passionate again.

V^V^V^V^V^V

Beethoven had a life-long habit of falling in love with women who were not available to him. They were either too young, or too rich, or too married. This was a constant pattern. And even though Beethoven professed a belief in that singular Other, in that Soul Mate, he never created one for himself.

Smart man.

He used that unobtainable Love to drive his creativity. Just listen to the music. Where do you think that kind of pain comes from? Beethoven rips your heart out and leaves it throbbing on the floor as he wanders off completely unaware of the devastation in his wake. What drives that?

Unobtainable Love!

No, I am not comparing myself to Beethoven……..too much. But I understand. I do. I see how that sort of thing can work. I see how it can make day-to-day life more exciting. I can see how the delicious loss of that One True Love can make life worth living.

And I see how that sort of thing can implode right in your passion-driven-obsessive-compulsive-validation-seeking creative face.

I was still in love with who those wonderful, exciting, young, passionate women were. And they ruined it. They didn’t just reject me. They rejected themselves. They morphed into completely undesirable, uninspiring, pedestrian, run-of-the-mill ex-girl friends. Who needs that? Where’s the inspiration? Where’s the Passion? Where’s my will to live?

I needed the memory of them to get me through the day. I needed them to inspire me to create today what I imagined I had yesterday. I needed that image of us running in slow motion through the park. And they destroyed it all by turning into something so far beneath who they were.

They destroyed my past. They destroyed the warm summer nights by the lake under the stars listening to the radio, safe, with an incredible amount of TIME spread out in front of us. So many possibilities, so much TIME to succeed, so much TIME to be together, everything was possible, TIME made it possible!

I knew nothing of politics, nothing of life, nothing of success and failure, nothing of real pain, nothing of family and job, nothing of responsibility, nothing of cause and effect. It was the last time I was remotely naïve and happy.

And now they have destroyed Time and Happiness.

They destroyed it all by changing.
And changing badly.

I am so disappointed in them.
I am so disappointed in myself.

V^V^V^V^V^V^

Coincidentally, the 39th anniversary of the first time I had sex occurred not too long ago. The fact that I both know and even, in some matter-of-fact way commemorate that, undoubtedly says more about me than is prudent.

But I digress.

It occurred to me to try and see what happened to the object of that first lustful affection. You know, just out of curiosity. Face Book. Maybe Google. You know, just out of curiosity.

And then I thought Oh Blessed-Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, what possible good could come of that?!? She’s living in a trailer park if she’s living at all. You know she is. So just hang on to the finely honed image of that experience you have cultivated over the eons and leave well enough alone.

And as proof that you can teach an old dog new tricks, that is exactly what I have done.

One of my X-es, about whom I know very little now (and that’s fine!) made the unforgivable mistake of knowing me too well when she said, “You’re not in love with me. You’re just in love with love.”

Right you were, Calamity Jane.

And as it turns out I’m fairly happy now.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s no Camelot. But it’s good. And measured from every angle, except the I-Can-Make-Up-Something-Better angle, my life is the envy of millions. On my worst day it’s still a joy and a privilege to be on the planet. For the most part, I’m having the time of my life.

Of course I can make up things that would be better. And yes, there are days I dream of killing people who are VERY close to me. But you can’t let that fuck you up. If I weren’t the type of person who constantly imagines something better, I wouldn’t be where I am today: Happy, and terrified of leaving it all behind.

But I do miss The Passion.
That memories-engine that drove me to learn just a little bit more and to dream just a little bit further.

That must be the price tag for contentment and security.

High price………



The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts
And our brains.

Paul Simon

How It All Works

As near as I can figure, from my narrow perspective…………

And I can’t emphasize this enough: I have a very narrow perspective.
Not the least because I am a human being.
I see through a glass darkly…….on a bright sunny day.
There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
I can’t find the tunnel.
The perspective is very narrow.

And from this narrow perspective and on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, I have concluded that there are Four Ways Life Can Work.

It’s possible there may be more. But more is too complicated. And I’m betting that even if there are more, they are just derivatives of the Big Four.

So here’s how life has to work.
One of the following:

• All of life can be preordained.
• Life can be completely random.
• Life can be the result of choices that affect the outcome.
• Or it’s a combination of the second and third ways.

Now it’s important to understand that these four possibilities are devoid of religious (as distinct from Spiritual) implications. All four can be true or false with or without the presence of a Deity, or a deity. But life, in the big picture, must work one of these four ways, or in a minor variation.

There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to each of them.

Preordained

Pretty simple. It’s all worked out before you get here. Probably before any of us got here. It’s all written down. There’s no changing it. We are on the ride but we are out of control. When you walk out the door, which way you turn has already been established. And no amount of mind-fucking yourself is going to change it.

“I want to turn left, but I am preordained to do that, so I’ll choose right, but wait, what if I’m preordained to change my mind, well then I won’t, I’ll go left after all, but wait, what if…………..”

You get the idea.

Now the good news is that if this is True, we can all just sit back and relax. Right?
I mean, what’s the point? You’re destined to do what you are going to do anyway. So just relax. And if you can manage to relax, well then, you were destined to do it. And if you can’t manage to relax, well, it means you weren’t destined to relax. Simple.

Apparently this is such good news that lots of people buy into Predestination. In fact, the August 2010 issue of Playboy quotes two religious surveys that found that 61% of Americans believe God has predetermined the course of their life. And 32% of those responding said they also believe there is no sense in planning a lot because ultimately their fate is in God’s hands.

So what’s the bad news?

The bad news is that it leaves us this: Out Of Control!!

This does not mean it isn’t True, by the way. It can still be True, but it just feels bad to be out of control. For one thing it’s scary. That means bad things can happen to me at any second and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it….unless I’m preordained to…

For another, it’s boring. It’s the birthplace of apathy. I’m going to succeed or I’m not. I’m going to be great or I’m not. Either way, it’s preordained. So what the hell………
“Bartender, another glass please.”

At work, you want to move up the ladder of success. You want to make more money. You want the key to the executive wash room. So you work harder. But what’s the point? It’s already set in stone. You either make it up the ladder or you don’t. You’re a student, an aspiring actor, a painter, a car mechanic. You want to be better, to be at the top of your game. But really…what’s the point of trying?

Uniquely, if this one is True, it must be True all by itself. It cannot, by definition, combine with any of the others in a hands-across-the-sea-ecumenical-kum-bah-yah hug. It’s either completely True or completely false. There is no shade of grey.

The roulette wheel spins. Where the ball lands has already been decided. So has your bet, just before the ball bounces to a stop.

Totally Random

This one is almost as bad.
Or almost as good, depending on how you feel about it.

Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Walk out the door. Turn left. Turn right. It doesn’t matter. Either way, your entire life will be different than if you had turned the other way, or if you had stood still, or if you had backed up. Or maybe not. Because it’s not only walking out the door. It’s every decision you make. Each one changes things that are completely unpredictable because, among other reasons, millions of other people are turning left or right as well. The world is one, giant random number generator.

As before, the good news is that I might as well relax.

The bad news is that I might meet the love of my life. Or I might not. I might get a better job. Or I might not. I might pass the class. Or I might not. It’s not preordained. It has not been decided. And worst of all: It’s-Not-Up-To-Me. Anything can happen. Anything. At any time. Completely random.

Spin the wheel. It’s all up for grabs.
The odds are exactly 1 over the number of options.

But there is……………one more bit of good news.

This way is NOT exclusive.
It can play-well-with-others.

We Have A Choice In Everything and Those Choices Affect the Outcome

I am master of my own fate. It’s all in my hands. I decide what happens to me. I make the decisions and those decisions control what happens to me next. I am not programmed to turn right or left. I can think about it. I can consciously analyze the pros and cons and I can make the choice that best suits me. Or, were I a self destructive person, the choice that worst suits me.

Or, of course, I can go through life and make choices without thinking about them at all. But those choices will have just as much affect on me as if I had analyzed them completely. They may not be conscious choices. But they are still my choices and they guide my destiny.

So what’s the bad news?

I’ll tell you.

It’s a tremendous responsibility. It’s a lot of pressure. It means I have to pay attention. It means I need to take notes in Life Class and apply what I learn, because whether I succeed or fail is completely, 100% up to me. Oh sure, I can slack off. But there will be a price to pay. And the price will be failure, resulting in pain and suffering that could have been avoided if I had just made the right choice.

Not that’s pressure, boys and girls. Relentless, crushing pressure of the most insidious kind. There is no wiggling off that hook. It’s all, ALL up to you.

So, what could possibly be the good news?
It’s potentially the most productive choice.

Let’s be clear.
It doesn’t matter what you believe about life when it comes to the Truth. One of these Four Ways is True. Your belief in it or against it does not change that.

(There is a defensible school of thought that actually makes a case for the contrary. What you believe DOES change reality. But I am not prepared to go down that road right now and further muddy the waters.)

I digress…..

One of these Four Ways is True. And whether it is the one you believe or not, it goes right on being True. So why not choose the one that is the most productive?

If “Having A Choice” is True and you choose to live that way, then you will have made the most out of your life. But even if it is not True, so what? You still worked hard and believed that what you were doing mattered and it felt good. And, of course, if it is True that you “Have a Choice” and you don’t believe it, well then, you have completely wasted your life.

Belief in this Life System gives you an enormous amount of power.…..and responsibility.

For example, one of the irrefutable conclusions derived from this theory is:
People have exactly what they want, or they would have something else.

That’s very powerful.

You’ve heard people complain about their lives. And as often as not, what did you think to yourself?
“If they wanted something else they would makes different choices.”
Right? They have what they have because it’s what they chose.
You’ve seen it…..in other people.

Choices come with very specific RESULTS. And most of the time we know exactly what those results are going to be. Further, the same choices inevitably lead to the same results. There is an unstoppable machine called Cause And Effect and it is always turned ON.

Oh sure, there are periods of transition in life. Moments when we are actively moving from where-we-are to where-we-want-to-be. But these moments are so brief as to be completely insignificant. To even admit they exist is to give them too much weight. They only become an excuse for people to use as a justification for poor choices. For all practical purposes, lightening fast moments of transition do not exist. We spend 99% of our life in a permanent place. Driving to the same job. Seeing the same people. Making the same choices. It is “Ground Hog Day!”

We have what we have because it is what we want. And we arrive where we are as a direct result of the choices we have made. To say we don’t like where we are and to go right on making the same choices is to spit directly into the hurricane of Reality. It’s very simple. If you Truly don’t like where you are, you will makes different choices and be somewhere else.

For the record, this is the way I raise my children. No they are not “just kids” whose brains have yet to solidify and are, therefore, not responsible for their idiotic and unproductive behavior. Choices always come with results and you need to think about those choices in order to achieve the results you want. As a consequence, if you fail or you are angry or you are bored or you are unhappy it is because of a choice YOU made, not because you are the hapless victim of oppressive parents.

My wife and I don’t always agree on this approach.

So what’s so “good” about this news?
You are in control. It’s all up to you. You have all the power.

Of course Helen Keller could spot the downside to this “good news.”

When things go wrong, there is no one else to blame. I can only look back and try to spot the incorrect choices. When I don’t have what I want, I can only comfort myself with: Yes I do.

As Charlie Brown said, “There is no heavier burden than a great potential.”
You got that right, Chuck. It’s a sword of Damocles that hangs perpetually over the head of the guilt ridden and the overly analytical.

If I had enough information and I analyzed it correctly, I would always know where the roulette ball was going to land. If I knew the speed of the ball and the speed of the wheel and the arc of the toss and the humidity and the temperature and the rotation of the earth and several hundred other things it would be possible to predict exactly how to bet. But I don’t know all that. But wait. Do I know enough? Is there a pattern? Can I spot it? Is there something I’m missing that can help me win?

Some people consider the unrelenting pressure of always having to make the “right” choice a small price to pay for being in control.

Some people don’t.

A Combination of #2 and #3

Maybe it’s a little of both.
My choices matter in a random world.

The choices I make always have results. But it’s hard to predict those results. There are so many random factors. There are so many other people making choices too. And I can only make my choices based on the information I have. But even under the best conditions, I never have all the information. And as long as I don’t have it all, as long as there is one random factor, can I ever make a perfectly informed choice?

According to the “Combination System” some choices, on the average and over time, will be better and more productive than others. You are rewarded for good choices and punished for bad ones………..usually.

Think of the game RISK.

There are opposing armies. The placement of those armies is up to you. There are better options, more powerful choices, than others. But eventually, after all the placing has been done, it’s time to attack or defend. And to attack or defend you have to roll the dice.

Sometimes the dice fall your way.
Sometimes they don’t.

Now if you have made good placements, it can, almost always, compensate for bad luck. But not always. Sometimes you make good choices and the dice don’t roll your way.

Conversely, sometimes you make bad choices and still come out ahead.
Not often.
But sometimes.

So what’s the bad news when it comes to a “Combination of #2 and #3?”

Things are still fairly unpredictable……with a dab of pressure-to-make-the-right choices thrown in for good measure.

If I knew the speed of the ball and the speed of the wheel and the arc of the toss and the humidity and the temperature and a few hundred other things I could, with the help of a powerful computer, predict exactly where the ball would land and could bet accordingly. But I don’t know all that. No one could. And so, from all appearances, the game appears random. But I do have some information and therefore I am obligated to at least try, in the face of random odds, to make the right choice.

The bad news is that my choices, usually based on, or ignoring, a great deal of information, DO have an effect. I am responsible for accurately analyzing the situation and the choices I make WILL affect the outcome. But I am NOT in control.

So what’s the good news?

Often, perhaps even most of the time, I do have enough information to make a good or bad choice. “Good” and “bad” relative to how much closer it brings me to what I want. I am in control of much of my life. A great deal of whether or not I succeed is up to me. I can change the way things are. I can establish goals and achieve results. I can place the armies where I choose.

However, when things go “wrong,” it MAY not be my fault.
It may have been an excellent plan.
The dice just did not roll my way.

Another of my favorite Peanuts cartoons has Linus saying something to the effect of:
“You get exactly out of life what you put into it. No more and no less.”
To which Charlie Brown responds:
“Sometimes, I wish there were a little more room for error.”

The good news is that built into the “Combination System” there is a little more room for error.

You can relax…..a little.

The finesse in life, of course, is to be as honest and accurate with your assessment of which outcome is the result of random error and which outcome is the result of a poor choice.
Get good at that and you can rule the world….if you want to.

In Conclusion

Please notice two things.

As I said earlier, God may or may not enter into it. You may believe any of the Big Four with or without a Deity involved. That gives you eight possible choices if you add or subtract God from each one of them. But it doesn’t further the case for or against any of them, or for that matter, for or against God. The Almighty, at least in most people’s image of him, has the option to set up the rules any way He chooses. Though I would argue that He is limited to the Big Four.

In addition please note that the Big Four only apply to the way things APPEAR. I have studiously avoided the argument for or against the theory that this-is-all-a-fairy-tale-anyway. That argument says life is a figment of our imaginations. Given our narrow perspective and our human filters we can never Truly Know anything.

But until I can embrace that theory in the ultimate sense of the word, it seems wisest to function as successfully as possible on the appearance-plane. Some would argue that approach dilutes and defeats the search for ultimate Truth. I would argue it is easier to mount a successful search when you are not hungry than when you are.

And so I lean in the direction of a “Combination of #2 and #3.” I like to think my choices matter. And I like a little room for error. It feels right to me. And as long as it feels right to me, that will be my choice.

If it ever starts to feel wrong, I’ll make a different choice.

Death

So here’s the deal.
I don’t want to get old and I don’t want to die.

You see the problem, right?

My mom just died last year.
She was 93.
By the time she died she was bat-shit-crazy.

Okay, she had Alzheimer’s. But for those of us on the outside looking into the gaping maw of that terrifying unknown, it comes across as “bat-shit-crazy.” Because frankly, it’s easier to buy into “crazy” than what’s actually going on. A human being is being slowly eaten away. Their body goes on living but WHO they are is disappearing. Worse, it’s morphing into some hideous shadow of the WHO they used to be. And what if that happens to me? And what is it like to live with that every minute of every day of every week or every year of ……… ?

When she finally died, it was a blessing.
See MOTHER 1915-2009 to understand that.

My friend Charleye (that’s how he spelled “Charlie”), on the other hand, went in for kidney surgery. He came out just fine. I talked to him. The last thing he said to me was “I’ll be home tomorrow. Give me a call.” That was the last thing I ever heard from him.

That evening there was a follow-up emergency surgery as a result of something that went wrong with the first one and that was it for Charleye. I never saw him again.

The year before he died Charleye had written his autobiography. His beautiful, young wife gave it to me after he died. If I’d read it before he went to the hospital, I would have said my “goodbyes” then. Charleye started at the beginning of his life and told the whole, wonderful story. He laid it all out there. What happened. What he thought about it. And what he had learned from it. Charleye summed up his entire life. He said everything he had to say.

He may not have known it was a “good bye” but I bet he did. I sure did. It screamed, “This is it. I’m done. Goodbye.”

And that, my friends, is why I do not write books. I don’t want to EVER be finished. I don’t want to EVER say EVERYTHING I have to say. Think of all the people who have said what they had to say, either in literature or art or music…….and then died. Think of them! Not me, boy! I’m not going to write a great novel or paint a great picture or write that 9th Symphony. I’m playing it safe. Only short articles and not so much as a pop tune. I’m going to live forever!

Between Alzheimer’s and Charleye’s way, of course I would rather go Charleye’s way. But let’s be honest. Everyone wants that. But that is not the choice, is it? The choice is Charleye’s way now, today, this very moment……or Mother’s way in 30 years. Ah, you see? Now that is not an easy choice is it?

Before Charleye said he would “see me tomorrow,” he said this. “You know, when I went in for surgery I was not the least bit worried that I had made the wrong choice.”

Here’s what he meant by that.

Charleye and I both grew up in very conservative, Christian surroundings. We both attended religiously based educational institutions and we both went into the entertainment business. Eventually, we both come to our senses and dumped that fairy-tale-clap-trap-religious- mumbo-jumbo in exchange for a more realistic view of the world. So what Charleye was saying to me was that when it came down to the moment of Truth, he did not regret that decision.

That was the single greatest gift Charleye could ever give me and I will never forget him for it.

Because I am not just afraid to die. I am terrified. Frankly, if there was ANYTHING I could do about it, I would! Every article in this book is about death and the meaninglessness of life. Everything I write is just my sublimated way of tilting at the existential windmill. If you haven’t noticed that then you have missed the point.

My adopted father, certainly the only one I had ever known at the time, died when I was nine. And the most amazing thing happened.
NOTHING.

The world did not come to a standstill. There were no major holidays declared. There was no weeping in the street. People did not throw themselves out of windows in despair. On the contrary, life, as near as I could tell from my very narrow perspective, when right on as it had before. I heard people laughing. I saw shops open. Nothing on TV about it. It was business as usual.

And I realized right then and there I was in big-shit trouble.

We come. We go. Except for a few people at the top of the food chain, nothing changes. NOTHING. And heck, even for them, there’re still dead. So what difference does it make?

Not that leaving something great behind wouldn’t at least help.

I spend much of my life studying and talking about people who left some great stuff behind. Composers, artists, performers, people who left behind such Beauty, such Truth, they will never be forgotten. But that’s not “me.” I’m never going to do that. When I watch AMADEUS I am all about Salieri. That’s a guy I understand. That’s the guy living in my head. I can see the Beauty. I can hear the Truth. But I never will produce it. I am doomed to a life of the perceptive, intelligent, and therefore perpetually in pain, audience.

Lily Tomlin said, “Hell is having a vivid imagination and no talent.”
Hell yes, girl!

And since I know I will leave nothing of value behind it just makes it worse.
I was here.
I left.
Nothing changed.

I try to stay busy. I try not to be alone.
Actually, alone is okay, as long as someone is nearby.

I fear dying in a foreign city, alone. Dropping dead on the street. Being stared at by strangers. Strangers who don’t know me. Strangers who don’t care. Strangers for whom I am at best a curiosity and at worst an inconvenience. It’s why I do my best never to travel alone. I need someone there to be with me at the end.

I avoid roller coasters, and any boats that carry less than 1000 passengers. I prefer the stairs to elevators. As a pedestrian I always give traffic the right of way. I check the expiration date on food. I keep my cell phone with me at all times. I hate to fly. I have to assume I am going to die just to get on a plane. I put my affairs in order. I’m nice to the children.

Normally I’m fairly mean to the children. It’s not their fault. It’s just that I hate them. They have so much time left and they waste it. They waste it on video games and phone calls and cheerleading. Things that don’t matter. And they have so much time. So many years to waste and not care. Damn, I hate that.

This kind of banal, existential trauma has been amply dissected in a brilliant book entitled “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker. Let me sum it up for you. All of life is about death. Everything we think, everything we do is ALL motivated by the fear of death. Everything.

I recommended this book to Charleye several years before he died. When he’d finished it, he called me up and said, “It’s incredible. It explains everything.”

That’s why I loved Charleye. He understood.

There’s nothing to do about my not-quite-debilitating fear of death. It’s coming one way or the other. I’m not even sure it hasn’t already happened. That’s one place I try to go from time to time, for the small comfort it brings.

I try not to think about eternal punishment by a God I rejected years ago. I try not to think about oblivion, the unending No-thing. I’m not sure which is more terrifying, eternal punishment or eternal !

I try, and fail miserably, not to take it out on my family and the people around me. Think of these few pages as an apology.

Obviously one day it will all be over and I can relax.

I guess there is something to be said for that.

Will This Be On the Test?

Knowing that I’m a teacher, it will come as no surprise to you that I have actually been asked this question……often! My immediate reaction is to take self-righteous offence followed by retribution……….if only I knew the student’s name.

Trained as I am in hearing what is behind the question, it is quite obvious that the underlying sentiment is, “Look, I’m simply here because I have to be and I loathe every minute of it. I want to elevate myself only to the lowest rung on the ladder of success and even that without one ounce of effort more than is required. So please, only tell me exactly what I have to remember. Ask me to remember it as soon as possible because it is stored in the shallowest strata of short-term-memory I can find in this vast empty chasm I call a brain. And then let me go my way only to forget I ever darkened the door of this educational inquisition.”

Those of you who are teachers know this is true. Those of you who are not now know what we hear when you ask that question!

Rather than respond by resorting to the first thing that comes to mind, such as “Listen you lazy son of a bitch,” or “bitch” as the case may be, “if you had one jot of imagination or one tittle of passion…..”

And here, of course, I would have to digress and explain the Biblical reference to “jot and tittle” (See Mathew 5:18 where the Hebrew vowel point and punctuation are referenced)……

…….you would know that you are in the presence of greatness. You should be willing to crawl naked over broken glass to hear me say “hello,” let alone tan in my aura as I generously cast these pearls before the swine your hapless parents created in some fit of cousin-on-cousin passion. Everything I say ought to be on the test because it is all of the utmost importance. Space and time alone hinder my having you memorize each utterance word for word. Because I know that for you to do so would improve your prospects in life far beyond your mortal ability to comprehend.”

What I say instead is, “Well, it wasn’t going to be, but since you asked, it will.”

I do this in hopes that the other students will now wait in the parking lot after class and pummel this imbecile on my behalf.

But when I stop to think about it, a fortunate by-product of answering the question in writing, I realize that this politically naïve student is only voicing the sentiments of mankind as a whole. This educational microcosm is merely the stage where players give voice to the ongoing search that drives most people into the arms of religions, jobs, politics, social organizations, hobbies, consumerism, and every other cockamamie scheme they adopt to try and achieve happiness.

Because what is being asked in the bigger picture here is this: “Just tell me the rules. Just let me know what it is I need to do and what the consequences will be if I don’t. Just lay out the plan for me so I have some fucking idea of what is going on in this insane world and put an end to the randomness with which I am besieged on a daily basis. Help me to understand the meaning of life in the simplest possible terms so I can get back to important things like TV and tabloids. Just tell me definitely, once and for all, what’s going to be on the test!!”

That is the “big picture question.”

Why do you think conservative, rule oriented religions are the fastest growing? Why do you think the political party that promises the biggest chicken and the most pot wins the election? Why do you think people are so obsessed with rules at work they will even argue over the negotiation table for the right to impose more? Would anyone ever join a club that had no rules?

We crave rules. We long for black and white. We lust for dualism. It’s either THIS or THAT. “This” will get you one thing and “that” will get you the other. No variables. No if, ands, or buts. Do “this,” get “this.” Do “that” get “that.” It’s the law of the Medes and Persians…….

At which point I would have to stop and explain that these were the irrevocable laws of ancient Persia circa the beginning of time.

……It’s the law of gravity. (No explanation required here.)

We are obsessed with rules and have been since we climbed out of the bat guano. It started with that vicious Babylonian Hammurabi about 2100 BC. Then the code of Moses, God love him, and he apparently did, allowing him to wander for 40 years with absolutely no one to ask for directions. Sparta in ancient Greece produced the next significant set of rules around 900 BC. And Roman law is said to have started with Romulus around 750 BC.

The law of natural selection has made us rule whores and wanting to know what’s

going to be on the test is but one small man-eating manifestation filling the vast pool of angst in which we swim. The genuine crisis in life, however, comes when we discover that the rules which have always been the very foundation of our existence are at best fluid and at worst a complete sham.

This happened the first time to me when I was five or six.

My father was a Southern Baptist minister, a fact you may or may not have encountered in another chapter. But it’s worth repeating.

Needless to say, but essential to write, I was raised in a conservative environment. Cards were forbidden. Dominoes were embraced. What everyone else called a card table we called a “game table,” and dancing was sex standing up. Sex itself, well……that wasn’t going to happen, alone or with a partner, until you were at least a hundred and hopefully Jesus would come by then and put an end to it altogether.

And so it was through this world, the only one I had ever known, that my father, my mother, and I drove in our 1952 Plymouth down a back country road late one night. In the distance we watched a light grow closer, not bright enough for the Second Coming so obviously some sign of civilization. Soon, to our right, slid into view a barn with both large wooden doors swung wide open to reveal a dance resplendent with gingham dresses, be-booted beaus, and a cowboy with a fiddle standing on a hay stack. Cecil B. DeMille could not have staged it better. My father slowed the car, presumably so that we could enjoy the spectacle longer. As I craned in the back seat to take it all in I heard my mother’s southern drawl.

“Isn’t that beautiful?”

And like a California earthquake coming from twenty miles down, I could feel the rumble. Something destructive was on its way to the surface. I could not have articulated it then, but I remember the feeling. Like jumping off a cliff to avoid the devastation. Falling. Floating. Waiting. Yet there is no escape.

“But I thought dancing was wrong,” I ventured from the back seat.

Like grasping at a passing branch in free fall.

Everything hangs in the balance. The car is suspended. The dancers do not move. The fiddler does not play. I am in a chasm with no bottom and no sides.

“Well sweetie,” my mother responded hesitantly, “……………………not all dancing.”

CRASH

I hit the ground and keep right on falling.

Just turn right at the existential crises and follow the road home.

Only one conclusion is possible.

If ONE rule is suspect, then they are ALL suspect.

If ONE rule has some variable, some wiggle room, some uncertainty, some margin for error then they are ALL up for grabs.

There is no black and white.

It’s ALL a judgment call.

And since that’s true, who are WE to make the judgment?

What if WE are wrong?

Then our rules are wrong and we are royally and righteously screwed!

I began the day knowing right from wrong. But all of that suddenly and irrevocably changed. Once upon a time dancing had been evil. But now it seemed a Texas Two Step was beautiful and a pelvic thrust was the move of Satan. What’s next? Sex, drinking, gambling, perversions of all kind? Sometimes evil, sometimes beautiful? It’s a slippery slope to “all things in moderation.”

“……..not all dancing,” indeed!

That’s the “big picture reality.”

And that’s why I don’t rip out the student’s larynx and feed it to him for lunch. Because I know the importance of rules. And I know what it’s like to have them shattered.

“Will this be on the test?”

What I’d like to answer is, “I don’t know. It’s all so arbitrary. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Take what you are dealt and make the most of it. Learn everything you can and just because no one ever asks you to remember it doesn’t mean it hasn’t done you some good. It sure as hell won’t hurt you. And just because it may not be on THIS test doesn’t mean it won’t be on THAT one. Or even the OTHER one. So like a good Boy Scout, “Be Prepared.” You’re still going to get screwed at some point. But you can hedge your bets with information, with knowledge. A few problems you can avoid altogether. A few more you can mitigate. And this buys you time to build up a little tolerance for the disasters that are unavoidable.”

But saying that wouldn’t help.

Honestly.

I’ve tried.

Mostly for my own amusement.

But it’s a rule that’s true…………..maybe.

Introduction to "Mother" Article

The following article was written shortly after my mother died last year. Jed McKenna (or whoever is pretending to be Jed McKenna) suggests "writing your way to the Truth." I can't vouch for that, but certainly this article, and those that follow, have allowed for some very therapeutic processing. One hopes they are also moderately entertaining and edifying.

Mother 1915 - 2009

Mother (1915-2009)

My mother died this past January 1, 2009, New Year’s Day.
Actually, my mother had died over the previous several years. But her body stopped functioning shortly before I arrived at the Rose Parade in Pasadena with my wife and two children.

My father died on Christmas Eve. We’ll be getting to that. But as you can imagine, it has thrown a bit of a damper over the holiday. My mother did her best to increase the width, depth, and breadth of that damper by reminding me every Christmas Eve, for years and years and years, just how long it had been since he died. As if I could forget. There was also a bad Halloween story along the way, and a couple of other minor celebratory set-backs. In any case, how much misery I could ring out of any joyous occasion has been an ongoing theme among my families for time immemorial. And so it was when I called Barbara, my altogether too loving and forgiving ex-wife, and told her, as she sat watching the parade on television, that my mother had died, her first words were, “Oh crap!” I knew exactly what she meant.

It’s just as well. I probably deserve it.
She was not a good mother. But it was not her fault. She had a very limited view of the world. Nor was I a good son. But I can’t pretend it was as a result of not knowing better.

And I can’t say I wasn’t ready for her passing. In fact I had 47 years, 7 days, and 16 hours to get ready for it, which I had started doing the instant my father died. But it still gives one pause, and tends to pound incessantly on that ubiquitous mortality button.

As I prepared for her memorial service I arranged pictures of her throughout her life on a couple of poster boards to be displayed in the church lobby. This is now taken by most people to be preferable to having an actual body present. Talk about a mortality button. There were no pictures at my father’s funeral, by the way. We had the real thing, with the lid open and my mother standing at the foot of it shaking everyone’s hand as they passed by with their final respects. I was invited to stand with her, but couldn’t do it, and so watched from the front pew.

In any case, the earliest pictures of my mother I had were around the age of 19, I think, maybe younger. And some when she was in her early twenties. I surprised myself by being quite attracted to this young person. I almost cringe as I type it. But she looked, in the pictures, like a girl that had a hint of a playful, feisty side. Almost coy. I never saw that side of her. If it ever existed, it was long gone by the time my brain started sucking up impressions.

At least, if you don’t count the kind of women to which I have always been attracted.

But it made me wonder who she was then and where that girl went. Of course, she had lived through the Great Depression and a World War. That could certainly take the spunk out of anyone. To say nothing of two marriages to Baptist ministers and an atheist son. But I had seen those pictures before and couldn’t wait to throw them in a drawer. I was not the least bit interested in my mother’s past. I wasn’t even that fond of my own. I realize now I rarely asked my mother anything about her past, including the great historical events. I think I just assumed I could get a better, more thorough and accurate analysis in a book. And I was probably right. But now, here I was attracted to someone I never, and never would, meet. Wondering who she was and what had happened to her. Obviously I know what happened to her. But I just can’t seem to fit what I know with those pictures.

If my mother had once defined herself as coy and playful, she certainly hadn’t for many years. On the contrary, I was convinced, upon encountering the works of Tennessee Williams, that he had used my mother as a role model for virtually every passive aggressive, manipulative, southern female character he had ever created. Though I’m positive my mother did not define herself that way, at least to herself.

In point of fact, I don’t think my mother ever consciously defined herself at all. I don’t think she would even have had a concept of the process or its ramifications. My mother was, no doubt, like most people. But I think, unconsciously and often indirectly, she presented herself to the world in very specific ways that, more often than not, left an impression on people.

For example, my mother was a musician.

Some of my earliest memories of her are of the long-suffering, cross-gladly-baring piano teacher who struggled to teach a seven year old boy, with no talent for the keyboard whatsoever, how to play. But then, that had been her assigned task.

My parents were not able to have children. If I ever heard the reason I don’t recall it. And so it became their intention to adopt. However, while my father had been blessed with enough of a heart murmur to secure an honorable discharge from the army in the midst of wartime, that same irregularity had also prevented an adoption, and would, of course, soon kill him. In 1950, adoption agencies could afford to be selective. The world was not crawling with unwed mothers equally comfortable with tossing baby Harold in the dumpster as leaving him on the doorstep of the neatest drug clinic. And so my parents, burdened by a medical condition that might well leave a young child fatherless, had been repeatedly denied a baby.

In 1951 my parents lived in San Francisco where my mother taught music at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and served as secretary to the President while my father pastored a near-by church. In addition, my mother visited a hospital in Vallejo, just across the bay, where she volunteered to play the piano and teach music to the patients. As fate would have it, a line befitting so much of this story, an unwed mother in the hospital, having come in contact with the aforementioned itinerant music teacher, had contacted the hospital chaplain and informed him that she wanted this woman to have her baby “so that he would grow up to be a musician.”

She did not know this woman and her husband had wanted desperately to adopt but had been repeatedly refused. Nor did she know that her progeny had no more innate musical talent than the average house cat. My parents had prayed to God for a child and their prayers had been answered. My subsequent prayers regarding talent were summarily ignored. This may well account for our divergent views regarding The Almighty.

So at the defenseless age of six days I left the hospital with the only parents I would know for the next thirty years and my earliest role models would be a father who lectured rooms full of adoring believers and a mother at the keyboard exhorting them to song.

In addition to the virtually fruitless piano lessons, my mother played tirelessly for me as I learned to sing, forging through everything from camp songs to opera arias. She took me to musicals and set me in front of the television to watch Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, drove me to every audition and performance I ever had, and eventually checked my harmony and counterpoint. All the while she was the pianist or organist in every church of which she was a member, save the last one. And even there she was allowed to play once in a while, as much for her sake as the congregations I’m sure.

That my mother was a musician was as much a part of my world as gravity or the air I breathed, and just as taken for granted. It was just the way the world was. My mother never said, “I’m a musician.” It would have made as much sense to say I am a human. It just was.

Nor, frankly, did she ever say “and you should be a musician too.” In fact, come to think of it, I don’t recall my mother every giving an opinion one way or the other. Actually, my early intentions were to be a minister. A choice made for all the obvious reasons. And I firmly believed with all my heart that God wanted me to be a minister. The problem was: I didn’t want to be. This minor difference of opinion could be avoided during my formative years. But eventually, sometime during high school, the time came to preach or cut bait and so God and I had it out. The conversation was in the garage of our small, two-bedroom home. I remember it quite well. I flat out told God I did not want to be a preacher. I may have even said, “Go ahead, kill me if you must. But I’m just not going to do it.” I don’t remember. But I remember I told Him NO!”

Having thus turned to a life of crime, labeled either theater or music, it was as yet to be determined, I made the appropriate choices. My mother was never anything but supportive. I think she also would have been just as supportive if I had gone into any “professional” line of work. But music, the eventual choice, certainly did not disappoint her, though it was not until I was in my late twenties that I learned the adoption details I just related above. I had always known I was adopted, but the intentions of my birthmother were quite the revelation.

Because my mother was a musician, the sound of the piano was a constant in our house, along with the sun rising and setting. In addition, since my father was a good amateur artist, our walls were covered with original art, not posters and my grade school handprints. The resulting environment of a small, lower class house with frequent live music and original art in every room led me to believe, when first I began to sally forth, that other people led very odd lives.

And because my mother was a musician, several months before she died, I wheeled her over to the piano to see if she could still play. How could she not?

My mother had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for the last five or more years. The symptoms came on slowly. Forgetting words. Failing to balance the checkbook for months at a time. Things that could be dismissed. But for the last three years she had not been able to live by herself. And for the last year, it had been impossible to carry on a conversation. She never failed to recognize me, but she was an often agitated zombie living in a wretched and Godforsaken world of others just like her.

Thanks to my mother having tortured me on the rack of piano practice during my formative years, once in a while I imagine anew that I can play the piano after all. It just takes discipline and practice, I pretend. So I sit, re-accessing the underdeveloped part of my brain that remembers which lines and spaces go with which notes and for how long. This time it was the summer months, just prior to mother’s death, which allowed time for me to push that rock up the hill again. Of course, I did improve whenever I assailed the mountain, and this time was no exception. Practice will always result in some improvement. But trust me, I’m a musician, the miniscule improvement came at an untenable price.

It was undoubtedly this re-acquaintance with the instrument that led me to believe that playing it again might have therapeutic value for my mother. And so it came to pass that I wheeled her over to the piano that slumbered in the dining room of the mental institution, euphemistically referred to as an “assisted living facility,” where she dwelled.

I opened a hymnbook in front of her and said, “Go ahead, you can do this. Remember? You used to play all the time.” Bless her heart, she tried. And it was not that she didn’t have the strength. She was weak, but she could have done it…..physically. No. She couldn’t read the notes. I watched her try. I saw how her fingers moved. I saw how her eyes darted from the page to the keyboard. I know that experience…..INTIMATELY. She didn’t know how to play the piano anymore.

I tried to show her. My recent practice had given me just barely enough confidence to play the piano in a dining room full of Looney Tune characters. I played the soprano and alto line together, hitting an occasional base note for good measure. It was identifiable, but would not have pleased my mother. Yet she just sat staring, her fingers resting immobile on the keys. If anything, it seemed as though she enjoyed it. But when I stopped she looked uncomfortable, ill at ease. “Here, just play one line,” I encouraged. But she shook her head. She wanted to go back to the dinner table. “Are you sure? You used to enjoy this.” I might as well have asked her to interpret the Koran. Dinner was waiting.

At this point I was on the verge of an embarrassing, emotional collapse. I just wanted to delay it until I could make it out the door. As I pulled her wheel chair from the piano the inmates applauded and called for more. They loved me. And I wanted so desperately to be good for them. I wanted so much to bring joy and happiness and peace into their miserable and doomed lives. I dreamed, in that frozen moment, of sitting down and playing for hours until they were all asleep……..or better…..much better…..wafted to their eternal reward, free at last, on a cloud of musical ecstasy. I wanted to give them that. I wanted to have that Power. And not just over the walking dead, but over all humanity. Imagine the awesome Power of manipulating people’s emotions, their very essence, of irreversibly altering their lives, of ennobling them, and making the world a better place. Imagine it!

But I didn’t have the Power. And worst of all, neither did my mother. The God that had always denied me had now turned Indian-giver, and left His deprived beloved without an identity.
I took her to the table and said goodbye quickly. I was desperate to get out of the room, if only the door would remain in focus. I hoped no one would interfere with my departure. I did not want to break down in this place. I was terrified I might never leave. I aimed for the door and bolted. A large, gentle bear of a man stood up from his chair and blocked my path. He stuck out his hand. Looking me straight in the eyes, he said, “Thank you for coming.”
I disappeared down the gapping black hole, the embracing maw of mortality.

I called Barbara. I got lost on the way home. I think maybe I went to bed. I don’t remember.

My mother was a Musician and on the urn that holds her remains I have had chiseled that word. I have restored what God took away. I have that power.

The other word I have had etched into the marble is Teacher.

Of course she taught public school, sixth grade English, for years. Before that, of course, music on the graduate school level, and throughout her life in an infinite number of Bible studies, Sunday School classes, and Wednesday night prayer meetings. But all of that pales in comparison to teaching me. She taught me just about all the practical things I know in life.

Within days of my father’s demise she taught me how to balance a checkbook and do the laundry. She taught me how to cook, from scratch, and clean the house to her exacting standards. She taught me how to iron and arrange books on the shelf so they look better. She taught me how to answer the phone and write letters. She taught me how to set a table and how to talk to adults. She taught me to open doors for ladies and to walk on the outside of them, next to the street, in case cars were to splash mud as they drove by. She taught me when to use the word “was” and “were” correctly and never to end a sentence with a preposition. She taught me how to make a bed and fold a fitted sheet so you couldn’t tell it from the flat one. She taught me how to arrange flowers and how to hang pictures. She taught me how to organize a kitchen as well as a monthly budget.

All of these things are useless, of course, when it comes to earning a living, unless you run a hotel or a concentration camp. But they edify the spirit and enhance the beauty of life, as well as provide a distraction to keep the voices at bay. They also program you to abuse your own children despite your best efforts to the contrary. The fact is that, like Leonard Bernstein, my mother’s greatest legacy may be more as a teacher than a musician. Certainly, with me, her success was greater in the former than the latter.

I’m not sure my mother thought in terms of leaving a legacy, anymore than she thought of defining herself and her role in the universe. I think my mother saw herself not so much as an individual as rather a partner, a member of a team. Once, during a mutually unfortunate starter marriage, my altogether unloving, unforgiving first wife and I took my mother to lunch. While grazing my way through the buffet and trying to ignore as much of the conversation as possible I heard my mother say, “A woman without a man is only half a woman. But a woman with a man is a woman and a half.” I looked up just in time to see a look on my soon to be ex-wife’s face that silently demanded I set the woman straight, or she would choke her to death with her bare hands. “What did you say?” I parlayed for time. My mother repeated the offensive catch phrase. The wife who was just months away from total ownership of my house may have been Missouri white trash, but she had been to graduate school and knew better than to stand for this drivel. So before the bitch could do serious harm with a butter knife, which, incidentally, she had not placed correctly next to her plate, I offered up a, “Well, that’s just silly.”

Like water off a duck’s back. I should have as easily scaled the Great Wall of China with Bibles and religious pamphlets as assail my mother’s beliefs in this matter. That was what she believed. That is who she was and she had spent years amassing evidence to support it.

Seconds after my father died that Christmas Eve, she knelt down in front of me in the hospital lobby, as I returned from a fruitless conversation with God in the back seat of our ’52 Plymouth, and said. “Honey, our daddy’s dead. You’re the man of the family now.” And off she went to make phone calls.

My mother could no more be without a man in her life than our country can be without a president or lesser nations without a king. There are rules in place, courses of action lain down for generations, to be scrupulously followed on these occasions. There is a time honored system carefully crafted by our founding fathers. There is a pecking order, and I had ascended to the throne. There was no more point in fretting over the ability of a nine-year-old boy to cope than worrying about Alexander the Great. I was in charge. I required adoration, not care; obedience, not condolences. I was the head of the family now, with all the omnipotence accorded thereto.

My first official act was to develop an almost paralyzing fear of death, specifically that of my mother. If God could kill my father, of what else was He capable? I’d read what he had done to the children of Israel, and he supposedly loved them. Only hours before, this minister had stood in the pulpit and exhorted the people to love the Lord and obey Him always. Some gratitude from God! Now, on another whim just as capricious, I realized He could take my mother and then I would be truly and completely alone. I began to assemble reinforcements. This was war.

I began to kill off my mother almost immediately, reducing her to the role of a sacrificial pawn whose demise could not hurt me. In addition, I began creating a powerful, almost unassailable ego. Ironically my mother was complicit in this, heaping boundless praise and adulation at every turn. But it was important to know that, should the worst occur before help arrived, I could hold off the Enemy single handed.

Then came phase two. I needed to invest in someone else. I needed a substitute mother. Someone younger with a better shot at outliving me. And so I created an early marriage to the aforementioned unloving, unforgiving bitch, moved out of my mother’s house, and went away to graduate school to further fortify the ego blockade. Along the way I amassed a bank account that would both allow me to wage a comfortable war as well as purchase distractions when the battles went badly. I created defensive walls by piling up the bodies of meaningless, if entertaining, sexual relationships. I read books and kept lists of them to prove I was smart and had made good use of my time. I balanced my checkbook to the penny and kept my house like an elegant museum. I struggled to become a great musician and have the Power. Of course you can’t win every battle.

The demise of my first marriage proved both an economic and psychological setback. Clearly I was still vulnerable. But I was not defeated and the war waged on. And well after I had reduced my mother to an impotent, useless pawn in my war with the God of Death, she died.

During the last year of her life conversation was virtually impossible. She could only speak a few, often nonsensical words in a row and no sooner did I ask for clarification than she had already forgotten what she had said. Any thought that might have animated her had vanished into the limbo where people in her condition must live. And so it was on the last time I saw her. In fact, the only two words I understood were, “I’m sorry.”

There are a number of ways this could be interpreted. For example, “I’m sorry your father had to die when you were young and that I forced you to grow the fuck up in a split second,” or “I’m sorry you have never achieved the Power and therefore wound up leading a life of not so quiet desperation,” or “I’m sorry that you were scared so shitless of death striking again that you could never afford to love me,” or “I’m sorry I’m in this condition and wish it were not so.” But that’s not what she meant. No siree. I knew for an unquestionable certainty what she meant. I saw it in her eyes.

She meant, “I’m sorry you have to take time out of your important life to take care of me.”
As God is my witness that is what she meant.
I know it for a fact.
I absolutely do.

The next time I saw her she was in a cardboard box.

When my mother was coherent, she had always said she wanted to be buried with my father at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Francisco. Upon remarrying, however, the plot next to him and reserved for her, had been sublet. Now, widowed for the second time, she was eligible once again to join my father, but this would now require cremation. She told me this and said she was “alright with it.” Given her conservative religious beliefs, I would not have been surprised if she had felt otherwise, but that was not the case and so, for her, it was settled.

I was offered the opportunity to attend her cremation. Since I had not seen her since she had died exactly one week earlier, I arranged to go. I went alone. Who would go with me? I have no siblings. My mother had no relatives living in the state. I would not impose it on my wife, or even my loving and forgiving ex wife.

It was 6:00 in the morning. A warehouse in a rural community of agriculture and light industry. And people who park cars on their lawns and don’t know shit about music. People who never balance their checkbooks or iron their sheets. People no more capable of setting a correct table than digging the Panama Canal with a toothpick. People who wouldn’t know great art if it bit them on the ass. People who enjoy bowling and video games. People who have absolutely no knowledge of the Power. These were the very people my mother had warned me about, though professed to love in the name of the God of Death. And now, like His only begotten Son, she had returned to die among them.

It was cold and it was gray. I was greeted when I arrived and taken through the messy office to a large garage containing two furnaces. My mother’s body lay in an open cardboard box just outside the door of one of them. Two men gestured me forward and then stood back to give me some privacy. “Oh mother,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”

As I stepped back and turned, one of the great unwashed held out a small necklace and said, “I found this on your mother and wondered if you wanted it, or if you preferred it left on her.” I was in charge, you see. I was the one to make the decision. I was the man of the family.

I took the necklace and watched her body pushed into the furnace. The door closed and the man pushed a button. “The process has begun,” I was told. “Thank you for the necklace,” I said, to this gentle and kind man who genuinely seemed to care about me and my mother’s necklace.

I drove home, barely holding The Void at bay.
The Void is the God of Death’s welcome mat.

It was Julian Barnes in his book Nothing To Be Frightened Of (which, incidentally, ends a title with a preposition) who wrote that there are four categories of people. First there are those that do not fear death because they have faith. Equally honored are those who do not fear death despite having no faith. Less respected are those who, despite having faith, still suffer from a perfectly rational fear of the God of Death. Then finally, the scum of the philosophical earth and completely without merit, come those who fear death and have no faith.

I believe that blasphemy is a victimless crime, and yet, even on my worst day, I dread leaving this interesting, ever eventful, totally random life for a cold, dark, and mindless eternity. What Lily Tomlin said is true. “Hell is having imagination but no talent.” But as long as there is life, there is hope. Hope for the talent. Hope for the Power. And once in a while, glimpses of it. Moments when I think “yes…..yes, just like that.” And then it’s gone. But I’ve seen it. I have.

There are those who believe that when the God of Death finally wins, it will be like that all the time. Living in the Power. But I don’t know. No one does. And as long as no one knows for certain, it seems the best course of action to keep fighting………or not.

French philosopher Emile Zola said, “Mine has been a happy life, tinged with despair.” I know just what he means. But worse than a gnawing undercurrent of inadequacy must be
the hell in which I can only assume my mother lived for the last years of her life. I did not wish that for her, nor, can I imagine, she wished it for herself. And so I am glad that, given that singular alternative, she is gone.

When my father died, my mother created a scholarship fund in his honor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco where she used to teach. I have arranged to add her name to it and endow it so that it may exist forever. I don’t like the Baptists, mind you. They may be a harmless cult compared to the Muslims, but they brainwashed me nevertheless. If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be burdened with this war thing against the God of Death. However, it was her money and she would have loved it. More than peace in the Middle East it would have made her happy.

Finally, on the new tombstone that will stand above the preacher and his wife who adopted me, I had chiseled the word “Together.” I hope she would have liked that too.

Not dead of wounds, not borne
Home to the village on a litter of branches, torn
By splendid claws and the talk all night of the villagers,
But stung to death by gnats
Lies love.

What swamp I sweated through for all these years
Is at length plain to me.

Edna St. Vincent Millay