A Good Day

I'm posting this at 1 in the AM so I'm not actually talking about the 20th when I say today was a good day. But it really was. It was a holiday so I slept in, but got up in time enough for a gym workout and shrimp at A Salt & Battery. Then I had even enough time to return home and shave my face, carving my sideburns to the jawline out of the scrub that I left on my face all weekend. I'm happy to say that the 'burns are now frosty white, fading to black up into my hairline. It doesn't look so much like a birthmark now, like the white patch on my eyebrow does. I tell you, I had no idea I'd ever really have to contend with all this middle-aged buuuuullcrap.

So I went to deal with my clients tonight, and coming home I made my walk to Central Park West and witnessing the snow coating the tree limbs and Park wall, plus illuminating everything inside the Park as if it were painted for detail--all reminded me of something.

This was part of my dream. To work in Manhattan. To belong here. And to be helping people. To be doing good. I've said it before, but in a panoramic flash, I was reminded of it afresh--like the snow itself.

I belong here. With or without a significant other.

And speaking of dreams, I wonder if I'll see my father again tonight. He's been making a lot of guests appearances lately. Showing up in the oddest places, but belonging in every one of them. I wonder if it's my brain's way for informing me that I've forgiven him and I don't even know it?

All in all, a good day.

Circle of Life

Walking to my car tonight, I was reflecting on, y'know ... stuff. I was in the afterglow of my client's words tonight as I terminated our sessions together. He said, "Could I recommend you to some of my co-workers? I told them I was seeing a therapist and they said they needed to see one too."

When I told him I was available, he said, "Well ... would you be this good with a woman client?"

I had to laugh. I told him I was glad he thought I was good, and fortunately since I also have a female client with whom some good work was done, I could truly tell him, "Yes. I do the same work with women."

And on the mile-long trip back to where I parked my car (because I'm rushed between 5 and 6pm, racing into New York from the day job, I just park it legally closest to midtown and take the subway the rest of the way. At night when I'm done, I have the luxury of walking back to the car--which I do because it's New York City at night. It's magic.)

Anyway, I'm walking and thinking and realizing that my life is not so bad after all, even though it's Valentineless Day. I generously give smiles to those who make eye contact. I think nothing rancorous about the couples hand-in-handing past me. In fact, I wonder where they have just come from or where they're headed. Like Karnak The Magician, I could see a bed in their near future or immediate past.

Lots of oochin' and ahhin' going on tonight, I jibe with my inner voice. I look up to the lighted windows towering above Broadway and think, "Y'alls nekkid right nowww...! All sortsa kissin' and a' lickin' and a' rubbin' and a' massagin' going DOWN right now, baby, YEAH!"

And I wonder how many babies are getting started at that very moment. Whimsically I stretch out my fingers and count when these little sprogs are going to slide into our world later this year.

February. March. April. 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 8 ... o sh!t.

October.

Babies made on Valentine's Day get born on the average in October.

Mom?

Dad?!

You have got to be fookin' KIDDING me.

Ghosts Of Christmas Past

So I don't get to sleep early and while preparing for my drift-off, Mr. Bladder led me out of the bed and to the bathroom. Both roommates are home and it has not complicated my situation any. The leasee who is usually in a foreign country seems to have landed for a spell. Probably concert season is over. But we are the kind of guys who go into our rooms and minds our beeswax. We say hello in passing and it's just so very okay that way. But an added bonus is that he practices his stringed instrument in his room. And I totally mean it. In my last NYC apartment, there had been a student living in the building who practiced her saxophone, and when she played, the soulful sound echoed in the airspace outside my kitchen window, caressing the brickwork and ascending into the night air. It was like a cut on the soundtrack of my life, playing whenever I needed a good uplift.

Anyway, I went to the john and did my business. When finished, I turned to the mirror, as I often do, for a spot check on my appearance. I seem always to need to see if I look better to my eyes than I've done in the past (which could just have been this morning). Self-esteem issues and all that, blah blah blah.at

But tonight I saw something a little bracing. I saw a man three years older than my father was when I was born. I saw a man with a beard absolutely shot through with white hairs. I saw a middle-aged man. And then, when I dared to look deeper into his eyes, I saw my father looking back out at me. Dad didn't have much to say. It was only a split-second's worth of visitation, in fact. But he was there.

It could be that I realized it was Christmas, whereas I spent the Eve earlier today in a Starbucks getting my creativity on (holidays are the most productive times for me!) as if I were from a land where Christmas isn't celebrated. It's apparently a holiday for families and friendliness, and hey, I'm pro-humanity. But I had no intention to bond with my brother man. I just wanted to get out of the house and take advantage of the mild Winter. In fact, I just never want to spend an entire day in my room, isolated. Yet when I go do out, I don't seem to reach out. I'd rather just watch them all than talk to them.

So it seems as though I had a bit of a slingshot effect tonight in the mirror. The family that I tried to avoid lives inside my head, and they wouldn't go away. But what does Dad want? Is he jealous of my admiration of other fathers? Does he want his respect?

Sorry, Dad. You should have earned it.

But I'm no Scrooge and I don't need Visitations. As proof, I submit the following;

I bought these items in the weeks prior, for the first time.


And this is what it looks like when the flash goes off.

Merry Christmas!

Here Comes Your Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

Okay, not really, but what is your definition of "middle-aged"? Isn't it halfway between birth and death? If so, then no one knows when they're middle-aged because no one really knows when they're going to die. But if you take conservative estimates, 43 is middle-aged. And I'd much rather not be that, thank you very much.

Yet, in a little over a week, I very much will be that. Like it or lump it.

So.

What goals should I set before I turn 45?

Because really. I'm not dead. So what I'm not living in a penthouse overlooking midtown with my beautiful wife and children? I am living in NYC, overlooking a beautiful wall of trees. Soon as I get my car paid off, I'll be collecting money again. Which will make me more attractive for the Right One...

*skiiiiirk*

I don't feel like it. And not in any doomed, depressed, o-woe-is-me way. But in a middle-aged widow's way. I mourn the passing of the Right One, and I just don't feel interested in trying to do it all over again. Only, in this case, my Right One never existed. But I feel like I've already done all the work about relationship. I've fought, I've loved, I've learned, I've grown. The only thing I didn't get out of it are children. (Or a court-order to pay child-support and alimony).

So what's the fuss? I'll enjoy your children. Your poleclimbers who are eager to teach Daddy how to do the same. Your nervous criers who need some tough Daddy love and a lollipop on the way back to school. Keep telling me those stories. Those are lullabies for someone like me. I promise, I do smile, and I feel very warmly a part of the human race when you share those with me.

But why do I not want to become a full-time participant?

Well, let's see. I still sting from the last time I trusted someone (and this was not too long ago either. I mean within the last few months). The pain is not worth the good times. The pain SUCKS. It makes me furious. Fresh, bright sparkly motes of blazing-hot want-to-kick-somebody's-ASS furious.

Because when I was in my shell, I was f^cking HAPPY. I wasn't causing any harm to anyone and I was happy. But YOU had to come along and pressure me. You had to pry your f^cking blade into the seam of the shell and pry and pry and PRY until you exposed all the sensitive parts. And you got me to trust you, and even depend on you to take care of what you exposed.

And then what did you do?

You got me all wrong. You accused me of being someone I'm totally not, and you did it just to serve yourself. You worked to make me vulnerable, layed me out for display, then kicked it all over into the sand because you wanted your own way.

I was FINE before you.

I NEVER needed you.

And now it hurts just to think of your name.

*exhale*

Readers, I don't even know who I'm writing about. There isn't anyone who honestly fits this description. Whatever I've gone through in the last few months could not possibly have earned this kind of anger. Well, not completely.

So I must assume that what I'm feeling is from transference. This fury inside is an old one. It's older than the internet.

It is, of course, unresolved anger that I bear for my mother. Textbook case. Unresolved blappity bloop. I'm a damn stereotype.

Hate that.

Suffice it to say, my shell was the thing that protected me from ... stuff. If you wanted me out of it, then you should have

TAKEN

F^CKING

CARE

OF

ME.

If you didn't want to take that responsibility--then I invite you heartily to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE now.

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled drama ...

*skeeeeek*

That's me skirting past the issue. Because I've said it all before and nothing's changed in that regard.

I do wish everyone well, though. Celebrate whatever you can celebrate, whenever you can celebrate it. :)

Maudlin, Part Three

(Originally June 17 2006)

Tomorrow is Father's Day. I'm not about to try to dredge up something nostalgic about my own Dad. That wouldn't make sense. I don't have enough good memories to fill a paragraph.

But today I realized something, as I was considering the impending holiday.

Men suck.

Bah, that's not fair, I know. It isn't just that men suck as a gender, although many women would argue the point. It's people, on the whole, who suck. Self included. In my cipher, I can recognize only two fathers who might be noteworthy, deserving of a "Happy Father's Day". The other fathers are either absent or dead.

In the present context, since the beginning of June two of my friends have lost their fathers to death and two other of my friends have become expectant fathers with their wives.

I have other friends who's fathers died way before mine did.

I have two friends who never talk about their fathers--one being alive and not with my friends' mother, and one having died before I ever met my friend.

I have another friend who's father I greatly admired--he was a strapping masculine Italian, a well-liked goombah who seemed to like me well enough too. He'd ask about me through his son, my friend. It got so that I was ashamed to give any reports of myself because I hadn't been doing so well in the past few years (see Blog; Last Three Years). I looked forward to having better things to say one day when the man up and died. This was about two years ago. When I learned of his illness and of his terminal condition, I cried myself home from the lunch where I got the news. Between then and the actual death, I learned a little something. My friend seemed not to be all that bothered by it. I know he was affected in ways I'll never be able to describe, but what he mostly communicated to me in the following brief conversations was that his father was a bully who made my friend's childhood difficult, and my friend blames a lot of his own dicey behavior toward women on his father. He also gave me the impression that it didn't take long for his mother to move on either.

And through all these permutations I wonder and I wonder and I wonder what it's all supposed to be about. What is "Fatherhood"? What is it supposed to mean to have a father? What does my one expectant friend really expect to BE, when he becomes a father? What does my other friend, who is already a father but is going to add another child to his family in half a year feel about fathering?

And what the hell happened to OUR fathers? What the hell were they doing when we were growing up? Why were they letting themselves just freaking DIE, leaving our mothers and ourselves just all the hell alone in this nasty-ass, cruel effing world? Or why were they such @$$holes that they didn't instill better memories or values in us? (By the way, isn't the President a father? And the Vice-President? Aren't most of these so-called men in politics 'fathers'? And in the countries around the world? So much for 'fatherhood' making a "man" out of you.)

Why can only 2 out of 11 of my friends (I can bump that up to 4 out of 11 when I think about it) give me the impression that they even like their fathers, or the memory of their fathers?

You see, I know emphatically that I am what I am today because of my father--sprinkled with a heathy dose of lunacy from the remains of the mothering I received in my father's absence.

I chose to chase down a religion because I wanted a Father. I followed a narcissist in a cult-like religion for 11 years because I wanted a father. I went to a part of the country and joined a culture that never wanted me to be a part of them for 8 years because I wanted a father. I tried very hard to emulate the values of another very narrow-minded man because I wanted a father. I still adore the thought of that narow-minded man to this day because I want a father.

I ran in terror from every commitment I've ever had with a woman because of the father I had. I was molested before I turned 10 because of the father I had. As a result, I can't stand to be touched--because I had the father I had. I can't balance a checkbook or make sound financial decisions because of the father I had. I get lost within a fog of endless introspection every June because of the father I had. I fight for hope but now in my forties have to face yet another failed chance to fit into this world as a man, a husband, a father--because of the father I had.

No, not a pretty picture, I admit. Nothing really upbeat for me to end on either. I can offer this advice though--all you "men" out there who made a baby? You want a Fther's Day card? A necktie? Some kind of regard, even though you pretend you don't?

Then BE a father, for God's sake. Okay? I mean, at least TRY. Damn!

How Many Times Have I Started A New Post?

(Originally March 2 2006)

For the last two months, I've been adjusting to my new job and trying to find my place in the world again. There have been a few bumps along the way, namely provided by My Benefactor. He's a lot more unstable than I'd hoped, and there was one fine night that I was ready to leave...but had nowhere obvious to go. I have other friends who would put me up in an emergency, but I wanted to change my residence permanently.

It was a revisit with my historic struggles with interpersonal relationships. See, you just can't yell and curse at me. You can't get unglued and go for my character. Coming up with all sorts of criticisms and condemnations of me as a person integrally.

My Benefactor also has interpersonal relationship struggles, so if anyone will spill awful things out his mouth with no two thoughts about how he'll make a person feel, it's him. That's why he was eager to invite me into his home. I was an instant friend. Or so he thought.

So here we are, me trying to get a set of wheels under me as soon as possible, and him making sacrifices to help me do that. Unfortunately, I was rushing him and making suggestions that make him uncomfortable. I wanted him to risk just giving me the one car before I legalized it in my name, while he legalized the other that he had already bought, thus eliminating the need to share (which of course meant me driving him 30 miles to work, so I could have it for the day, and then me picking him up after my day was over). He evidently liked the company, but I just wanted to be done with 12 hour days.

So after I pick him up on the day in question, I have to drive him around to accomplish some tasks he needed, and out comes dashing a kid on a bike into the middle of the dark street. Well My Benefactor freaks out, screaming literally, and although I stopped and did not hit the little idiot on the bike, Benefactor's screaming went on and on into abuse. Calls me a terrible driver. Curses a bluestreak. Tells me my judgment is always bad. Tells me I had to be crazy asking him for what I was asking him. Tells me he felt safer driving while he was drunk than driving with me. And this he says after a full day of sobriety, so he has me pull over so he can get a bottle of whatever.

The content of the words I look back nw and see that they were not so bad. The screaming and cursing, however, I cannot describe. I only know that I was a teenager again at that moment, and it wasn't a dry drunk screaming at me, but my bipolar mother or my drunk father. And that's who it always becomes, whenever I'm getting cussed out. I've had at least one ex- tell me that "I'm not your mother" whenever she saw me shutting down, but nothing inside ME knew that. Emotionally, I'm just gone.

Well, days later, I found the guts enough to tell this to my benefactor. This didn't change his mind or anything, but it did stop his abuse cycle, which he had continued into the next day because he mistook my withdrawal and silence for rejection. Why I know his mind hadn't changed? Because he insisted that he hadn't been abusive. Yeah, okay. Cursing someone out isn't abusive. It's fun, actually? I didn't try to convince him. I only defended myself.

And things haven't been the same since. He invites me to hang with him in NYC to see plays. I don't want to go. He invites me to dinner. No thanks, I just ate. He didn't trust me as a driver? I no longer trust him as a friend. I would rather grind broken glass into my eyes than give him another opportunity to catch me out there like that again.

Well, eventually, I got the car legalized in my name and whatnot. He got his own car finally. He goes his way for days and days, and I play City of Heroes and go to Barnes & Nobles. I frankly don't care what happens between Benefactor and me from here on out. It's me alone again that I'm concerned about.

I'm comfortable again when I'm alone. And again, being alone is getting me nowhere.