Friends Like Us

The incomparable Kurt Vonnegut wrote that he knew what married couples were actually arguing about when they fought. They may have been saying, “You stay out too late!” but what they meant was, “You’re not enough people!”  The first time I read that I was fully in “Kurt Vonnegut Can Do No Wrong” mode (I hope I always will be in that mode) but I didn’t entirely agree with that statement. In my defense, I was newly married and certain that my wife would be all I ever needed. Silly me. As you well know, my wife is herself incomparable, and is my savior…but she’ll never be everything I need. And I’ll never be everything she needs. That’s impossible nonsense. Vonnegut was right again.  His point was that families had gotten so small, and people had become so isolated, that many marriages couldn’t stay standing when the winds started blowing.  You, dear reader, are a human. You need people you can laugh and cry with; you need many people in your life— people who are making the same mistakes you are-- assuring you that you’re not alone.  Without all those people you’ll start feeling lonely, even if you’re in love with one person.  And what happens when you feel lonely even when you’re in love with one person? A lot of things that make staying in love with one person pretty damn hard.

I didn’t start writing my blog so that I could meet people. I started it because there was a writer in me who needed to get out. But I was a lonely stay-at-home dad and there was more than a little part of me who wanted to be involved in the world.  I wanted my words to go out into the world and mingle, bringing me with them. As popular as blogging and social media are these days everyone knows that people who rely on them for social interaction are losers right?  Social media are merely the next in the line of technological advances designed to keep us inside, in the dark and alone right?  Wrong.

For a few decades, Vonnegut was right. Americans didn’t have enough people.  Family’s dispersed and shrunk.  People lived in their basements in front of television sets. Yes and televisions turned people into zombies, sucking life and giving nothing but a few laughs in return.  And wives looked across the blue glow and saw dipshits sitting there like lazy, boring dipshits. And men looked over and saw women who drove them nuts and who wouldn’t stop trying to tell them stupid shit.  And you know what happened to marriages.   Husbands and wives needed someone to whom they could vent their frustrations.  They needed people who would make them feel less lonely. And they did not have them. Can a marriage be saved if each partner has 10 minutes a day to vent to someone else?  Yes.  One can relieve a lot of pressure in 10 minutes. Imagine shoveling shit out of your house so it’s not in there stinking everything up. Ahhhh.

Enter Facebook.  And more people.  Don’t get me wrong, Facebook cannot replace good old-fashioned, in-the-flesh, friends and family.  But it really can add people to your life.   I have met some good people on Facebook with whom I’ve had very real, very deep conversations.  And I’m sure I’ve met some fake people, too. But who cares if they are real people or people pretending to be someone else?  I am “friends” with a few celebrities on Facebook.  Because there is really no way of knowing if they really are who they claim to be there are many people who don’t believe them.  And they think those of us who are the celebrity’s “friends” are stupid sheep.  My response:  I’m not following this celebrity over a cliff; I’m having a few laughs before bed. What the hell do I care if it really is a celebrity who is making me laugh? I don’t.  It is a person, an interaction, a human connection.  And when I climb into bed and whisper to my wife, “Jason Bateman thinks I’m funny,” she smiles and says, “me too.”  And I realize that my wife is my biggest fan, and I’m happy.

What Mania Means to Me (A Guest Post)

I've been following more blogs lately and discovered this awesome thing called a "Guest."  One of the new writers I most enjoy is The Klonopin Chronicles. She is funny and honest, but mostly she is a good writer. And I am tickled that my first Guest Post goes to her:

What Mania Means to Me

The hallmark of mania for me is how I feel like a superhero, super creative, super smart and witty (why I created a page to dazzle you with).  When I was on a manic "high," I used to say that I didn't need to eat or sleep because I was bionic.  I got really angry with people who said I was wrong to feel that way and that I needed to go to the hospital and take meds so that I wouldn't.  I would get so angry that I would snarl at them and claw and hiss and refuse to get out of the car.  Wouldn't you?  After I was finished the treatment that stopped that wonderful, invincible, genius feeling, I would stop the stopping by not taking my meds, carousing until all hours of the night, telling anyone who would listen my bright new ideas that tied up every loose end in the universe with one beautiful bow.  Making plans to go to medical school and finish in record time because then they'll have to believe me when tell them that there is nothing wrong with being manic.

Now I can recognize when I'm starting to feel like that, and I know I have to nip it in the bud, so I let my husband know (like he can't tell) and I go see the shrink or get extra support or whatever.  It is the hardest thing in the world to voluntarily let go of feeling like that, but I know I have to because as great as the high feels, the low is going to suck even more, if that's possible.   So I take meds and gather my loved ones around me and let everyone know.  I have to stay in the middle, which is boring, stable and healthy.  But most of all, safe.

Because I *have* to avoid the downside.   I have to keep passing the open windows (thank you, John Irving).  Simply have to.  As good as feeling good feels?  That is nothing compared to how bad feeling bad feels.  The hallmark of depression for me is not wanting to be here. I don't think about suicide per se.  I don't want to die.  I just want not to be here.  Everything I've done wrong (which is basically everything), every mistake I've made, every conversation gone awry, every faux pas gathers together in magnified excruciation.  They jump on the conference table where the Committee is convening to determine exactly how worthless, no, *harmful* my presence on the planet has been.  As evidence of why I shouldn't be here.  Shouldn't *have been* here.  This whole time.

So.  Staying in the middle is a good thing.  Boring, but good.  Learning to feel my feelings, but not too much.  That's a tough one.  Because I feel my feelings.  A lot.  Possibly more than I should, whatever that means.  Some people don't feel their feelings at all.  Or try really hard not to, in whatever way they can. That's another topic for another time.  My job is to have that creative energy, but not too much.  And to channel it in ways that make me glad to be here.  And to let it be okay to feel sad, from time to time.  But if "worthless" pops up on the psychic horizon, it's time to blow the whistle.  Time to remember to do the things that help me, in addition to my meds.  Swimming.  Playing music.  Creating this page (or according to the Committee, "this stupid fucking page, how dare you think has any value whatsoever, you have some nerve, we can't believe we need to keep going over this").

I have a mantra that is blinding in its banality.  It's insultingly simple.  And yet it works for me.  I'm embarrassed to admit it, but my mantra comes from a sitcom (yeah I watch tv, I have teenagers, how can I not, don't judge) called "How I Met Your Mother."

"When I'm sad, I stop being sad, and be awesome instead.  True story." 

I wish I had known that years ago.  Decades, in fact.  True story.

Grandma's Feather Bed

Yesterday I asked my facebook fan club (yes I get to call it that) what they wanted me to tell them about. My favorite response was, “Your favorite memory from when you were 17.”  I really like the idea of this one and as it happens she picked the perfect year.  I’m not lying when I say that this memory, when it happened, taught me that everything was going to be okay. How’s that for a story? Just think- if she had said “16” I would have told you about getting my driver’s license or something. But she said “17” so you get to hear about the time I lost my virginity in my grandma’s bed.

The End. Goodnight everybody! Remember to tip the wait staff and try the veal!

Kidding, of course.  Now before I go any further I want to tell you something:  This is not one of those anonymous blogs. My family reads this. That doesn’t matter much but I think I deserve some credit for telling you in front of them that I lost my virginity in Grandma’s bed. I won’t say it’s brave, because it isn’t. But it’s something, no?

Anyhoo, here it is:

As regular readers of my blog know, I had a pretty miserable childhood. I don’t go into much detail because I don’t see the point; there was nothing spectacular about the misery. But garden-variety misery is misery enough when you’re a kid.  The upshot is this:  I entered my 17^th year desperately needing love or something that could pass for it.

I was into my second year at Burger King when I turned 17 in April. Spring was in the air, as bad poets say. People were making plans for prom. I wasn’t one of them, of course. My self-esteem was still so low you would have to dig a hole to find it.  If you would have asked me what was more likely, that a stranger would walk up to me and give me $1 million or that an attractive young lady would agree to go to the prom with me, I would have gone with the stranger without hesitation. Still, I hid my despair well. I made people laugh. I flirted with the ladies.  And it happens that I caught the eye of Alison, one of girls at Burger King.  Not that I knew any of that at the time, of course. True, only a goofball could have missed the signals she started sending me- the attention, the giggles and smiles. But I was a goofball, believe that. I did notice that she was acting differently towards me (I can’t say for sure but I bet I went home and massaged The Truth just thinking about it) but on my own I would never, ever have thought she wanted me to ask her out. I just figured she had me confused with someone else.  Luckily, my friends saw what I couldn’t and tried to get me to make a move.

“You should ask Alison out,” Kevin (yes, Sug. The now Bull) said one day. What he knew, from talking to her, that I didn’t was that she was certain to say “yes.” He could have saved everybody a lot of trouble by telling me that then. But he didn’t.

“Yeah, maybe I will,” I responded to get him off my back.

But I didn’t.  Finally, after an awkward couple weeks in which Alison grew less and less nice to me, Kevin came to me with a piece of paper on which Alison had written her name and phone number, in purple ink, with cute girl penmanship.

“Here. She wants you to ask her out. Call her now.”

“I’m not going to call her from work. I’ll call her tonight. I promise.”

“Do it.”

“I will.”  But I didn’t think I would. Could it be true?  Are these people really my friends or are they fucking with me, more bullies who want to make me look like the piece of shit I am for their enjoyment?

Guess what? I fucking went home and I called her. I let myself believe that I had friends, that I was worthy of a pretty girl’s attention.

And, as you know, she said yes. 

Our first date was an after-work get together at Denny’s with our Burger King friends. I drove her home and walked her to the front door. We stood there talking for a while before she finally said, and I shit you not, “Kiss me.”

Have you ever been a 17 year-old boy, convinced that you are a piece of shit, still sort of thinking this is all a big joke when a beautiful girl tells you to kiss her?  Holy shit! When my autobiography is made into a movie this scene will have fireworks and music building to an explosive crescendo!  I don’t remember much about the actual kiss and, frankly, I’m a little embarrassed about what I probably did to my sock drawer when I got home. But I remember very well how it felt to have a girl want to kiss me. And there are no words for that feeling, as I hope you know.

That kiss was in April, I imagine, because prom was in May and we were an official couple by then. I don’t recall what else we did in those early months. Probably went to the zoo and a few movies, talked on the phone a lot, and kissed like bandits. I know we didn’t have sex. You may find this hard to believe but I promise it’s true: I was in no hurry to have sex with Alison. I was too nervous- she had had a boyfriend before me and was not a virgin. I found that terribly intimidating. I worried that the jig would be up, that I would be discovered as a fraud, if we had sex. Plus I was enjoying the hell out of having a girlfriend. I could have lived happily in that bliss for the rest of my life.

But, of course, that bliss starts to wear off. And I’m not going to lie to you, she wanted me pretty badly- I didn’t know it at the time, but I was kind of a stud in those days.  Eventually, I came around to her way of thinking and we decided we should screw.

Yes, screw we would. But we immediately began having logistical problems.  We tried parking my car in a dark corner somewhere only to be chased away by a cop. We tried her basement but her mom was too smart for that nonsense and never let us feel safe down there. My house was absolutely out of the question. My mom understood teenage hormones even better than Alison’s and wouldn’t let us be anywhere except the living room. Eventually, I decided it was time to take Operation Sex Haven to the next, safest level.

My grandparent’s cabin was 150 miles away, close enough for a day trip.  And it was vacant much of the time. My friends and I had used it as a weekend drinking spot before with no problems. I knew where grandpa hid the key and as long as we cleaned when we left, we were safe.  The trick was being sure that my grandparents wouldn’t show up while we were there, which I usually accomplished by calling them before going to the cabin.

“Glad everything’s good,” I would say, “So do you have anything going on this weekend?”

“Oh, no. Uff da. We’re too old to be running around you know,” Grandma would reply.

So Alison and I decided to make a day of it.  We’d tell our parents we were going to the zoo or some damn thing and would be gone all day.  Her curfew was 11, which gave us plenty of time; ahem, more than enough for 5-6 hours in the car and let’s call it 5 minutes in bed.

Yada, yada, yada. We had sex.  And the sex was not great, as I’m sure you understand. But, even though we had been a couple for several months, it was the first time I 100% believed that this was not a joke. I trusted that Alison loved me, wanted me.  Which made her the first person in my life who had ever really known me and wanted me anyway.  And that, my friends, is a feeling that sex, even good sex, cannot touch.

We stayed at the cabin until the last possible minute. I figured it would take us three hours to get home and we left at 8, probably a little after.  There would be hell to pay if we got home late and of course in the mood I was in I would have paid it. But I didn’t want to.  Guess what?  It was foggier than shit out, not that either of us had noticed. I couldn’t safely drive above 30 miles an hour.  If you’ve done the math you know that 30 miles an hour would get us back at, like, We’re Fucked Thirty. So I drove too fast, like an idiot. When we got to the highway I was fortunate enough to fall in behind a semi, also driving too damn fast, like an idiot. I followed far enough behind the semi that I could just make out its taillights, reasoning that if it slammed on its breaks or hit a deer I would have time to stop and hoping that the distance between us was too short for something to emerge in the soup. As we sailed through the darkness, Alison sleeping with her head in my lap, the red taillights of a semi just visible ahead, I felt something I had never felt in my life.  I felt…safe.  I felt good.  I felt loved. And I knew with 100% certainty that I was going to be okay.

P.S. Grandma is up in heaven now. And you may believe she is now rolling over in her grave if you wish. I choose to believe that she is happy that her grandson is okay.

P.P.S  We made it home on time, smooth as silk.

The Dad I Am

I’m not the dad I thought I’d be. I’m patient but not as patient as I imagined. Before I had kids I couldn’t imagine that I would be a Yelling Parent. Now I wonder if I will ever stop yelling.  I don’t think I’m making the same mistakes my parents did but God knows I’m making my own.  When I thought about being a dad I always pictured moments and how I would react in them- how I would deal with a kid having a public meltdown, how I would handle all the questions (I actually looked forward to that! I’d love having a curious kid and having the answers, I thought.)  I didn’t understand that parenting doesn’t feel like a collection of moments; it feels like a long, uphill rocky mountain climb. Yes, occasionally good things happen.  But you don’t get much time to enjoy them before you have to dive out of the way of a falling boulder.  And when those moments I had imagined do come I am so damn tired that I miss them. And the questions aren’t, “Why is the sky blue?” They are, “When are we going to Chuck E. Cheese? Why is it called Chuck E. Cheese? When are we going?” And they are asked 50 times before I’ve had my first coffee.  No one told me about this and I didn’t think to ask. 

I’ve had to move my “what-I-consider-a-good-dad” bar way down.  Now I think I’m doing good when I don’t yell mean things.  Apparently I’m going to raise my voice almost daily, but I won’t be abusive. That’s what it’s come to. “Sweet Jesus! Why the hell doesn’t anybody listen to me?  I am not going to ask again, pick up these goddamned toys RIGHT… NOW!” is a perfectly acceptable way for me to talk to my kids right now.  

I’ve always respected single parents. But now I practically worship them- those that are keeping it together anyway.  I’m at my wits end after spending 8 hours with my kids.  My wife does most of the evening parenting stuff and they pester her more than me on the weekends.  How do people do all of that-- the morning fight over clothes and brushing teeth, the day-long misery of work, the evening with kids who don’t want to eat what was cooked for supper and who splash like maniacs in the bathtub and fight like honey-badgers when it’s time for bed so that the parent barely has time to guzzle a glass of wine before going to sleep—alone? It’s damn near heroic is what it is because we have to share the planet with them and their kids and their success or failure affects all of us.  Next time you see a single parent whose kids are not ax murderers give them a hug and thank them like fucking crazy.

I still think I’m a pretty good dad. My kids are healthy and happy.  They trust me.  They know I love them. And more importantly, they don’t know how badly I want them to be older and more interesting.

Future Bra Burners

The other day my daughter, her friend, my son and I played a ball game in our basement. The girls made the rules up as we went but here are the basics:  We each held a ball, counted to 19, and threw it. Anyone who ended up holding two balls was the loser. Many times this led to my daughter and her friend saying to me, "You have two balls, you're a loser!" I tell ya, I was 18 before I realized that having two balls made me a loser! Kids grow up so fast these days.

The Conversion

The following is based on a conversation I had a few years ago (some of my recollections of that day may be fuzzy) with a friend.  Our Township’s Board had recently approved a family’s proposal to turn their land into a gravel pit on the condition that all the trucks that would now be coming and going use a designated route to and from the state highway.  We’ll pick up the conversation with my friend saying:

“We sure like to tell people what to do in this State, don’t we?”

“I see your point…”

“But?  There’s always a ‘but’ with you, Tom!”

“You should have seen me when I was single! Maybe not a ‘but’, but certainly many fine pieces of…ahem, where was I? Oh yes…I see your point but... since we built those roads and continue to pay for their maintenance, why isn’t it ok to have an engineer tell us which roads can take the most abuse?  ‘We’, through our local government, won’t tell them they can’t build a profitable business for themselves using the roads we built right to their front door and continue to repair but we will tell them which of the roads they must avoid with those huge ass dump trunks. I guess they can either pay to improve all the county roads all the way to the state road themselves or they can take a right at the end of the driveway and use the road the engineer says will best take the abuse.  Either way, they get rich if they want. And this way our roads don’t crumble while they’re doing it.”

“Still, I have a big problem telling people what they can and can’t do.”

“Really?”

“Of course!”

“You’re a douche bag!”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t come in my house and…”

“A-ha!  It turns out you don’t have a problem telling people what they can and can’t do!”

“In my home, yeah!”

“So maybe you need to think of your community as your home, which it is of course. Then you wouldn’t mind if we made some rules that we all have to live by.  In other words:  Congratulations! You are a Democrat now! I’ll get you some bumper stickers next time I’m at the Home Office.”

“Damn."  He paused and looked at the ground. He scratched at the ground with his boots, delaying as long as he could the admission we both knew was coming. "Well, Tom, as always, you make a good point. And you look so good doing it.”

“Thanks.”

“I guess I am a Democrat. Who do I need to call?”

“We’re a pretty loose affiliation, as you may have noticed.  But you’ll start spotting other Democrats in crowds now. It’s pretty ease.  They’re the attractive ones.”

Oh, For Christ's Sake!

Today's Comment Section Takedown finds our hero (me) running into a Leviticus-quoting Boob in the comment section of a same-sex marriage story. You know the quote, it's the one which says that men who lie with men as they do women are committing abominations (You'll notice it omits kneeling.)

My response (I've reworked it a little.):

@Brunhilde (not her real name)-- Perhaps you should consider reading from the parts of the Bible that teach kindness. As I understand it, it is nearly impossible to read the whole Bible and come away with the message that God hates anyone (even fags). Indeed, if you want permission to be a decent, kind, understanding person you will find it in the Bible. This is especially true of the portion that was written after God (supposedly) sent his Son down to clear things up. Yes, it troubles me when followers of Christ quote from the Old Testament to prove his hate because they can't find proof of it in any of his own words. My impression has always been that Christians gave a fair amount of weight to Christ's words, no? I guess the thing is:  The Bible isn't helping you if you are rifling through it to find permission to stay the same miserable person; it's beauty (I hear) is not in its ability to "let you off the hook", it is that it challenges its reader to be a better person. Repent or perish!