A Few Thoughts on the Oldest Profession

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Yesterday, I came across a photo of this bumper sticker: 
 

Taken aback, I posted a link to it on my Facebook wall while making sure to specify that this does not reflect the views of all conservatives. I got quite a few responses, which can be summed up by the following comment: “WHAT?!”  

Inevitably, as it is an issue on the minds of many, someone made an off-topic remark about how the Right is trying to restrict women’s liberties. A friend of mine (the post has since been taken down for mysterious reasons, meaning this person now exists anonymously) replied: “As for the reproductive ‘rights’ thing, do you mean women’s ‘right’ to have me pay for them to have sex…and not with me?”  

I, in no way, expect to change the mind of the person who wrote this. I did, however, in the interest of civility, send him a private message (which lacked the reflexively tempting snide comment about him having to pay for sex): “Um, so what you wrote about ‘women’s “rights”‘ on my now-removed post was kind of disgusting, the implication being that my wife and the vast majority of my female friends and family are prostitutes.’ 

The thing is, people really feel this way, and it kind of makes me want to throw up. So, let me explain how this works, and I will leave out the parts about the health of women with conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome so I can focus on the real issue, which is sex. And, because I don’t want people rolling their eyes at me, I will also leave out the word Viagra, despite its pertinence here. 

The word I won’t leave out is vasectomy. I have had a vasectomy. My insurance paid for it. My insurance is Federal Blue Cross, which means it is covered by the taxpayers. I had a vasectomy because I have no desire to impregnate anyone. By this logic, taxpayers are paying for me to have non-reproductive intercourse. Until the same pious men (and, occasionally, women) decry the use of private and public insurance funds to cover such a procedure, then I will not take seriously their claims of religious freedoms. 

Besides, what’s to stop those of certain religious convictions from going to a private insurance company that did refuse to cover contraception? Instead, they want government to do that work so they don’t have to. Just them, of course. Religious freedom and all. 

But let’s leave out the word hypocrisy here, because, as an arbiter of morality like Newt Gingrich have demonstrated, or as craven opportunists like the pro-choice-when-it-suited-his-political-ambitions Willard Mitt Romney has demonstrated, or as all of the people who support and believe them while trumpeting values have demonstrated, they don’t give the slightest shit about hypocrisy.  

Let’s focus on the sex, and why it matters. People like to have sex, because it’s fun. There is absolutely no correlation between crime and pre-marital sex. There is no correlation between self-identified Christian believers and pre-marital sex either. Regardless, those are the beliefs and values of one portion of one religion. Why should I do as I am told by someone who follows a different set of laws and commandments—laws and commandments that have nothing to do with the country in which I am a citizen? 

Let’s focus on the money, which is what the argument comes down to. The poster above feels that private, employer-based insurance should not have to cover the birth-control pill, because that is tantamount to him purchasing the pill (Never mind that the person who wants to purchase birth control is paying premiums for such a service). Those of this mindset say that anyone whose birth control is not covered by an insurance company can just find an insurance company that does cover birth control. Never mind that the out-of-pocket costs of birth control and private insurance are prohibitive, something I can tell you from experience.  

If companies feel that there is money to be made covering birth control, they will cover it. This logic justified segregation, under which no place that refused service to African Americans ever suffered businesswise. It took the federal government to correct that. 

Under this logic, there is nothing to stop any private insurer from not covering my Attention-Deficit-Disorder medication if they don’t believe it exists. And many don’t. There is nothing to stop a Scientologist-run insurance company to deny me coverage for my psychiatric medication, without which I may have literally killed myself long ago. There is nothing to stop a blood transfusion being paid out-of-pocket if the owner of your insurance company is a Jehovah’s Witness. 

For those of the religious/business freedom mindset, is this okay? If you don’t say yes, then your contraception bullshit is meaningless. 

In the South, after the Civil War, came the concept of the poll tax. The poll tax did not technically discriminate against African Americans. What it did was charge a fee to anyone who went to vote. See? Not racist. This, of course, eliminated newly emancipated slaves who had no money to begin with from having a say in their own government. But there were many poor people in the South of all colors. See? Not racist. To help out the poor, an exemption was made for those whose grandfathers could vote. The exemption didn’t specify that the grandfather had to be white—it just said they had to be your grandfather. See? Not racist. If your grandfather was actually a slave, well, that has nothing to do with race as it does with bad timing. 

I wonder why I don’t have to pay for my vas deferens to be cauterized. Is this a kind of Grandfather Clause (or, in my case, a Smolderingly-Attractive-and-Virile Young-Man Clause) because it was a one-time thing? Or should all men in the future be denied this as well, because of bad timing? 

In conclusion, tell me, do you really believe that insurance coverage for birth control medication is the same thing as prostitution? Do you really believe that every single woman I know who has used hormonal contraception, like most of the women in my life—and likely yours—are whores? I don’t even know what to say to that. 

Inconceivable

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The events of which I speak transpired in the year of Our Lord, two thousand and four, in the final week of the eleventh month, in the city of Bloomington, Indiana. Bloomington isn’t much of a metropolis, but the vast number of students at Indiana University certainly try to make it one. The side-effect of this is the sudden decline in the town’s population during holiday breaks. 

And so, during Thanksgiving week, peace reigns. That night, so long ago, the air was brisk enough to require a light jacket, but not so cold as to prohibit cycling. The hour was late, in that I had finished a long shift at the copy shop whose name I will not mention (it rhymes with “Pinkos”), and the quiet inspired me to push my bike home and relax.  

On my right loomed the vast parking lot for the IU Stadium, on my left sat the houses unfortunate enough to be across the street from the stadium, and on my cell phone spoke the man who, unbeknownst to either of us, would one become known as “Best.”  

We’d been trading vulgar jabs, as usual, through most of the journey, until a police car whispered up behind me and continued on. Given my history, I still flinch whenever I see a representative of the law, but tonight, I tried not to show it. I don’t have a firm grasp on the statutes of limitation on said history, so it was best I not draw attention to myself.  

“Be cool,” I told my friend.  

“Why should I be cool?” he replied.  

 “Heat.”  

He laughed. “You know I’m not actually there, right?”  

“Be,” I repeated. “Cool.” 

“Okay, okay.”  

“Oh, shit,” I muttered, because even the most law-abiding of citizens tenses up when a representative of the law flashes its lights and performs an action-movie U-turn in his or her direction, which this one just did.  

It took only a second for it to occur to me that the officer in that car was not after me. It’s not like I was carrying around a trunk-load of cocaine; I didn’t even have a trunk. The inspiration for this act of vehicular drama must have been quite spectacular, and I was sorry I had to miss it. I mean, this town was dead.  

As the cruiser sped away, reflections of its lights receded behind me … except … except they weren’t actually receding. My heart leapt.  

“Okay,” I said, “I think something really entertaining is about to happen nearby.”  

“You’re going to have sex with a bunch of goat farmers?”  

 “I’ve been doing that the whole time we’ve been on the phone,” I replied as I looked over my shoulder, just in time to witness the same cruiser executing another U-turn in my direction.  

This time, it took almost three whole seconds for it to occur to me that the officer in the car was not after me, even when the siren whooped that singular whoop that heralded an upcoming punishment for a traffic violation. Because that would be ridiculous—so ridiculous in fact, that the officer had to stop his car, jump out, and trot over to my side to get my attention.  

“I’ll have to call you back,” I told my phone. “I just got pulled over.”  

“What?” he replied. “I thought you were walk—” 

I flipped the phone closed and faced the civil servant who was only a little bit out of breath. He asked, “Do you know why I stopped you?”  

There are so many things I wanted to say at this moment. The first was, “Speeding?”; the second was, “That may be the dumbest question I’ve been asked in some time.” However, the police packed pepper-spray in this town, so I went with number three: “No.”  

Before he could respond, a second cruiser came up from behind, passed by, flipped on its lights, turned with even more urgency and panache than the officer who currently held my attention, and came to a screeching halt directly in front of me. The driver swung open the door and stepped out, one boot at a time. The time of night forbade the use of the mirrored sunglasses clipped to his shirt, but in his heart, he was whipping them off with cocky menace. He swaggered up to the other cop, looked me up and down, and muttered something in his ear. Officer One muttered something back, which caused Officer Two to study me more intently.  

I would have been more self-conscious, were I not more clean-cut at that moment than I had been at any other point in my life—up to and including my First Communion twenty years before. This left my current state of being squarely between “What” and “The fuck”—so much so that I was completely numb to the third cruiser that whipped around the corner. The fact that its siren was already wailing and its lights were already strobing ferociously meant that someone had dispatched it. For me.  

The third cop’s assessment of me was much more appropriate given the situation. Frowning, he muttered to the other two, and they muttered right back.  

After some intense chatter, Officer One stepped away from the group and asked me, “Do you have any idea—” 

“No,” I replied. 

“Well,” he explained, “this time of year, there is a rash of bike thefts while all the students are on vacation.”  

Officer Two watched my reaction before adding, “And walkin’ on the side of the road like that, you look awful suspicious.”  

“Can we see your ID?” asked Officer One. I complied, and he took it back to his car for further scrutiny.  

Officer Two folded his arms. “That really yours?”  

“Yes, it is.”  

“Prove it.”  

This was a challenge, inasmuch as there was no registration I could pull out of my glove compartment, inasmuch as I had no glove compartment. And yet, somehow, a clear thought jumped into my head just as Officer One returned, license in hand. “If I unlocked this chain,” I asked, “would that do it?”  

Officer One frowned at Officer Three while Officer Two unfolded his arms so he could fold them again. “Sure,” Officer One replied with a shrug.  

It took only a moment for them to witness my demonstration, return my ID, thank me for my cooperation, and drive off. The blue and red flashing from their roofs gradually faded into the amber of the streetlights above my head. That night, I learned very important lesson: if I ever want to steal a bicycle in Bloomington, Indiana, I should bring my own lock and chain. 

Movin’ on up to the Osten Seite

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Unless I can weave a narrative idea around the random bits and pieces of misfiring neurons (as in the case of my unpublished-because-I-have-no-idea-how-to-go-about-publishing-it novel, The Long Trip), I usually don’t spend a lot time dwelling on dreams in my journal. However, sometimes, you kind of have to. 

Early, early this morning, the move that Kate and I will be making late winter floated to the forefront of my mind in the idea of a dream apartment. She and I had been looking around for a long time, and we had finally stumbled on a place that looked kind of beautiful. It was old, and so there were problems—for example, the thermostat was kind of beaten-up and unreliable, and the floors were freezing cold. Also, we’d be sharing the place with another couple. 

But that was also one of the draws, because they were good cooks, they were charming (the husband was a shorter version of Stanley Tucci’s character from Easy A), and their furniture was comfortable, tasteful, and extravagant. The place was also really huge. The kitchen was open, and could actually fit four people into it (as opposed to the one and a half in our real-world kitchen). Behind the bedrooms loomed a mini-auditorium/ballroom (Dream logic. Just go with it) with floor-to-ceiling windows that made great loading bays for the move. And—this is my favorite part—in said auditorium say a wood-burning stove for a bit of extra warmth in the winter, and maybe some hot apple cider. 

They asked us what we did for a living, and we told them, quite accurately. They told us what they did: they bought and sold authentic Nazi antiques, including posters, appliances, clothing, and the queen-sized bed that Adolf Hitler shared with Eva Braun before they moved to their bunker. With an excited squeal, the wife led us to the basement where she hid their prize acquisition: the basin that little Dolfy took baths in when he was just a baby. As you can imagine, we were horrified, but really, really classy about it. 

The worst part was we continued the dream trying to convince ourselves to look past their business*. I mean, I once convinced a potential roommate I was an Evangelical Christian to get a spot in his apartment (this is 100 percent true in the real world, FYI). Maybe this was just a job to them … That also meant ignoring the sheet music for “Deutschland Über Alles” sitting on their baby grand piano. The place had a basement. 

* This should probably go without saying, but, in non-dream world, Kate and I would have boogied the hell out of there, without even bothering to be classy, for reasons I shouldn’t even have to elaborate upon. 

It’s Funny How We Never Look Up

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I first met him that August. He sat in a park at One Liberty Plaza, New York, New York, tucked in a corner, glancing into his briefcase. He lived in harmony with the workers and tourists meandering through the area; he paid them no mind, nor they him. 

At that time, autumn was creeping up on me like it always did, promising cooler air and brighter colors. Autumn was always good to me. I met my girlfriend at the time in the autumn. And years before, I’d met the woman I would eventually marry, also in the autumn. 

This fall was especially welcome, especially after a summer of unemployment and unhappiness. I’d finally been granted temporary work throughout the file vaults of various banks in the financial district. I spent my lunch breaks in the park at One Liberty Plaza, smoking cigarettes and trying to draw; the latter was particularly galling, inasmuch as I seemed to have forgotten how.  

One day I glanced around the park, looking for inspiration that wasn’t in this anatomy book that seemed to be the source of my frustration, and there he was, sitting on a marble step in the shade. I wondered who he was. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he relaxing, or was he about to stand up? And what was in his briefcase? Was it his lunch? 

As the days of tedious filing stretched into weeks, I crept ever-so-closer and peeked over his shoulder—subtly, so as not to offend him. I remember seeing an adding machine, and a few other items. But for the life of me, I don’t recall what these other items were, only that they were archaic. 

The last time I saw him, I stood up from the bench, tossed my sketchbook (weakened from the stress of erasers and my dissatisfaction) into my satchel, and dropped a quarter into a payphone. My girlfriend’s thirtieth birthday was that Thursday, and I was trying to arrange something fun; she hadn’t been my biggest fan over the past several months, and I needed to do something to fix that. 

The last time I saw him was on a Monday, because on Tuesday, this happened: 

I’d originally wanted to write an essay about how much this country has changed in the past ten years—about how we’ve lost our way; about the silly phrases I used to love (i.e. “Bring ’em on” and “Dodged a bullet”) but no longer feel comfortable employing, as they have been soiled by those who have no concept of the value of a human life; about the collective, parasitic rage from that day that has turned us against cultures we don’t understand, against our own freedom, against our government, and against ourselves; about lost hope; about fear … 

And then I began running across never-before-seen photos from that day, begging the question: has somebody been sitting on them for ten years so they could release them for a big anniversary? And TV specials and stories and interviews on NPR and essays about what we’ve been up to over the past ten years … and stories from celebrities about what they were doing that morning. And I know that by noon on Sunday, we will have moved on to whatever it is we’re going to be saturating the media with this next cycle. It’s like the anti-Christmas. 

So I wasn’t going to participate. Regardless of everything I went through that day, I wasn’t going to participate. And then I remembered him. 

He’s since been moved around to museums and other parks. Now he’s been returned to where he once was, but in a prominent spot. I could go see him again, but it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing has been the same.  

I prefer to remember him from that late summer, when he and I were both alone, and we liked it that way. 

Somebody I Know Died on Thursday

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I wasn’t close enough to call him a friend. I wasn’t distant enough to call him an acquaintance. I don’t know what I should call him. I have always wanted to know him better, but our lives didn’t sync up enough, as sometimes happens. He has existed almost exclusively through Facebook posts and my friends. I can tell you this for sure: I liked him a lot. 

Back in the nineties, we served time together as copy kids at The New York Post. A copy kid is, if you don’t know, is an intern. Actually it’s a step below an intern. And, like it says on the label, you make and deliver copies. Sometimes you went out for coffee. Sometimes you delivered fresh copies of the paper to editors and departments around the office. On very rare occasions, you are sent out to cover a story—usually ones that there are no reporters available to do, or the boring hot potatoes that reporters would like to avoid. There’s not a lot of dignity to being a copy kid, but it was kind of an honor. 

The men and women I worked with at the desk were an interesting bunch. Some were changing careers—not for the money, but to be journalists. For all its bluster and front-page comedy and right-wing agenda, The New York Post was and still is to an extent a very old-fashioned paper, and there was something to be said about running out in the night with a Bic pen and one of those small notebooks with logo stamped on it. 

I think he’d intended to start out as a reporter, but it wasn’t really his thing. Instead he became a copy editor. Just like me. Also like me, he was making things up as he went along, and that meant a lot of mistakes and frustration. We were both simultaneously kind and weary and devastatingly clever. We sometimes had a beard and sometimes didn’t. 

Once I asked him why he was there, and he told me that he’d worked for years as a doorman at a fancy apartment building. The job was incredibly easy, and the money was good. “I went and spent it all on drinks and cab rides. I don’t have anything to show for it.” Well over a decade later he is married with children. 

At the age of forty-three, while his family was out of town on vacation, he suffered a sudden, unexpected stroke, possibly a seizure. It’s not entirely clear what happened, but it appears that he fell while walking, sustaining physical injuries. Police were called, and he was taken to the hospital. For weeks, things were hopeful. He recoiled slightly from physical discomfort. He opened his eyes. He responded to humor. He began to squeeze his wife’s hand. He moved his foot. Soon after that, he raised his hand. And then he took a turn for the worse. On Thursday, his breathing tube was disconnected, and he died. His touching obituary ran in The Post—even in The Wall Street Journal. 

I don’t know if he had a DNR. All I know is that, at some point, his wife had to be told that somebody was going to be responsible for performing an action that was going to be responsible for his death. Never mind the seizure or stroke—his heart and a lot of his organs were still working. By now they’ve cut him open and removed parts of him and put them into the bodies of others. 

How do you cope with that? How would my wife cope with that? How would I cope with that? 

I’m reminded of the days and nights I sat in an uncomfortable chair after my wife broke her ankle, only to have it reconstructed. Her pain was something I couldn’t comprehend, and throughout the hours of the morning, she held my hand, crushing it. She asked me to tell her a story. She asked me to read for her the comics I had with me for when she slept. She asked me for more meds. I’ve had a loaded gun held to my head; I survived the attacks on the World Trade Center by virtue of showing up to work a little early; last month I almost drowned; I’ve ridden the Cyclone at Coney Island; I can’t remembering being as scared as I was then. And she was fine. It was only her ankle. But she was so helpless. 

I’m reminded of the night my aunt died of lung cancer, only a few hours after I had seen her last. I’d been asked by my uncle or one of my cousins—I don’t remember who—to sit with her alone for a few minutes while they took a break. I didn’t want to. My lively, hilarious, child-like aunt was in so much pain I don’t think she knew who she was. I wish I could say that this pale, shriveled-up person in bed didn’t look a thing like her, but I’d be lying. I don’t know what she saw when she stared into the distances. Sometimes, when I’m not careful, I remember the breaths she took in—about two or three times a second, for days. The effort it took was loud and gasping. They told me I needed to hold her hand and talk to her. Her fingers were cold, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say, and so I sang the first song that came to my head: “Yellow Submarine,” by the Beatles.  

What did he look like on the hospital bed, bandaged from surgery, IVs in his arms, a tube in his throat, his eyes sometimes closed, sometimes open and glassy? I can’t get the question out of my head. I’m drowning in work—both editing and art; I’m going to New York to see one of the people dearest to me and to re-explore the city I consider a lover; immediately after that, I have a visitor I’ve never met in person, but I am really dying to. I can’t close my eyes without seeing him, or my aunt, or my wife. 

I wasn’t close enough to call him a friend. I wasn’t distant enough to call him an acquaintance. I don’t know what I should call him. I have always wanted to know him better, but our lives didn’t sync up enough, as sometimes happens. He has existed almost exclusively through Facebook posts and my friends. I can tell you this for sure: I liked him a lot. 

Insane in the Membrane

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My therapist advises me against me using the term “mentally ill” to describe myself. He prefers that I say “I have a mental illness.” I understand his logic and intentions—he doesn’t want my identity to be defined by something about me that is broken. However, I can’t disagree more.  

Your teenage years are when you start to forge your identity and become the person you’ll be*. And it was then that I became two people. On one hand, I was a quirky, soulful, artistic, sensitive, and intense guy named Jeremiah. On the other hand, I was a creative, energetic, charming, and very, very confident guy named Jeremiah. The first Jeremiah hated himself with a searing passion, while the second Jeremiah didn’t give a shit about anybody other himself. I was the angel and the devil on my own shoulders, wondering how the other could be so pathetic/such a douchebag. 

And that begged the question, what the hell is wrong with me?  

Lately, I’ve been a big fan of a (mostly) weekly podcast called “Sex and Other Human Activities.” One of the hosts, Marcus Parks, said this about being how bipolar disorder works: “Whenever you’re depressive, you let your life fall apart. Whenever you’re manic, you actively destroy it. It’s a dangerous thing to fuck with.” 

Lots of people talk about the stigma of mental illness. When I hear it described that way, I imagine frightened crowds with pitchforks, torches, and legislation who want to lock up the crazies, or at the very least, not invite them to parties. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived a third of my life in the twenty-first century, but I’ve never seen this. What I’ve seen is a lot of confusion. 

For starters, there aren’t a whole lot of actual “crazy” people. The mentally ill that most expect to see are muttering to themselves about government conspiracies, telling the voices in their heads to shut up, murdering people in cold blood (maybe with a giggle), or—if Hollywood can be believed—helping the normal folks see the world through exciting new eyes.  

That’s the biggest reason those like me can feel isolated. We look just like everyone else. We act just like everyone else. It’s assumed, then, that we function just like everybody else. After all, everyone feels down sometimes, so why can’t I cope? Everybody has mood swings, so what’s the big deal about mine? I seemed fine yesterday, so why not remember that? Life is hard; everybody knows that. Depression, Attention-Deficit Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and even Asperger’s Syndrome are just words coined by those don’t want to own up to being assholes; they’re excuses people make because they’re too lazy to suck it up. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life believing all of this. In fact, I can’t shake the residual feeling that maybe I am just a lazy asshole. This is easy thought to have, both for me and for those around me, especially because I’m doing really well right now. I didn’t just “snap out of it,” though. I invest a lot of time and money and effort to be this way, and if I want to stay here, I can’t forget that, not even for a minute. 

As far as being an asshole is concerned, manic-depression is an explanation, not an excuse. What’s the difference? Perhaps getting drunk will give us some perspective. A lot of alcohol can give us a lot of confidence, but it can also take away some of our empathy. We do and say a lot of things that would not be said and done otherwise. Some of it is pretty shitty. And if we drink enough, we may not even remember it. These things, however, get done and said by us, and there’s no making them go away. If we get into a fight, or worse, run someone over with our car, it’s our sober ass going to jail. No one ever argues otherwise. Some people can hold their liquor, and some people can’t. Those of us that can’t have a responsibility to control ourselves, even though it can be incredibly difficult. 

So there’s that. As far as coping with life, I know full well that we all have it tough. Maybe I would be happier if I just counted my blessings. I want to. God, I want to. But I can’t. I am physically unable to … Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Sometimes I’m able to. Sometimes I’m not. Day to day, I don’t know what to expect. 

For example, I got mugged at gunpoint once, and for the duration, I thought I was going to die. When it was over, I walked home, called the police, called my girlfriend, had a cigarette, and shrugged off the money I’d lost as a small price to pay for not getting shot. On the other hand, I once watched a braindead-but-awesome action movie I’d seen a thousand times wherein a peripheral character loses his job and his home and dies alone on the streets. I spent weeks full of dread, convinced that this was my ultimate fate. I don’t really have any say in what it’s going to be. 

It goes like this: imagine you’re walking on a patch of ice. Strolling along at an even keel, there are no problems. Folks around you are walking at their own pace. The sun is shining and the birds are singing (shivering, but singing). Unexpectedly, you slip. You’re not sure why—maybe your mind wandered, maybe you caught your foot on a twig or a rock or something, or maybe the wind knocked you off balance. Regardless, you’re lying on your ass on the slick ice, bruised, and every attempt you make at getting back to your feet results in you falling down again. When you finally do get up, the panic fades, and you’re left with embarrassment, wondering why it is that you’re the only one who fell while everyone else can stumble without toppling over. (Answer: everyone is wearing cleats, and yours came out of the box defective.) 

And so now, even though I’m on a mood stabilizer and am exercising like a fiend and keeping up with regular counseling, and even though I feel better and younger than I ever have in my life, I am utterly terrified of feeling. I can’t trust my heart, because it has, in the past, knocked me down onto the ice. It doesn’t look like it, but trust me, it’s a handicap. Like a diabetic, I need take medicine and closely monitor myself if I want to function. Does that make me superior to those who don’t have to work as hard to get out of bed some days? Hell no.  

I can tell you this, though, I got off better than some. Some don’t respond to treatment at all. Some don’t even have the option to get help. Some people spend their whole lives (or, like me, most of it) not knowing that this is a problem with chemistry, not character. I’m lucky; I have insurance, a stubborn wife, and (after a fashion) a good, personally invested psychiatrist who wants to see me working properly. 

It’s not fair that I’m this way—in fact, it really sucks. I don’t know any other way to be. I just am. I’m mentally ill, with all that entails.  

And I’m doing okay. 

*I used the word start for a reason, Argumenty Pants (you know who you are) 

All-American Gallic

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What I am about to tell you is absolutely true. I have changed only the names of those involved. The events depicted occurred in the Year of Our Lord 2011, during the month of April. But the road that led me here had been paved six months earlier, in the lobby of a hair salon. 

“That’s an awesome jacket!” the receptionist said as she carried my battered, vintage, leather pea coat to the closet. “Where’d you get it?” 

“A place on Broadway and Houston in New York City,” I told her. As I waited for my designated appointment time to roll around, I poured myself a cup of coffee and added, “What was really cool was that I walked in the door to buy a black blazer like all the men in New York are required to wear, but the guy at the register wouldn’t sell it to me. He told me to go with brown, and even picked out a shape that matched with my body.” 

“Those places are really cool,” she agreed. “You know the one down the street called ‘An American in Paris’?” I shook my head. She prodded, “Just down the street?” I shook my head again. She asked, “An American in Paris?” I shrugged. 

“Anyways,” she continued on, regardless, “they’re a high-end boutique, so you don’t really get to pick anything out for yourself. I went in there for a dress, and the woman who owns it—she’s French …” 

“Imagine that.” 

“… and you tell her a ballpark of what you’re looking for, and she finds exactly what you need. Only for girls, though.” 

“That sounds really nice,” I said sincerely. I love women’s clothes. Part of that is my artist’s sensibility; I love color, shape, personality, and the mixture of all three. Yes, you can find these in the men’s department—and yes, the artist in me appreciates the smooth, masculine subtlety therein. However, men’s fashion is missing one important detail: women. I just love looking at women. It’s biological. 

And so, the following spring, I pointed to a gentle, hand-painted, pastel sign and said to my walking companion, “We should go here.” 

My friend Noel had never been to the DC area before. In fact, she had never been to an East Coast metropolis before. She had recently finished an undergraduate education at both a liberal arts college near her hometown and a university in western Europe. The sirens of her future are singing to her of riches, knowledge, love, and more if she would just follow them. She wants to follow her own damned song, though, and so she has taken a week to clear her head, consider her options, and goof around in the sandbox of our nation’s capital. 

And if there’s one thing I love to do, it’s goof around. And, as I said, if there’s another thing I love, it’s shopping.  

“Let’s do it,” she said with a smile and a nod. 

Since that day, we’ve told and retold the tale, trying to ascertain what exactly went wrong. Noel believes we should have left well enough alone when she pushed on the door, only to find that it wouldn’t budge. 

I told her, “The sign says to …” 

She shoved again. 

“… to knock,” I continued, “and they’ll …” 

With a click, a deadbolt slid open. She frowned, shrugged, and ducked inside; I did the same. 

Soft sunlight drifted in from the street through enormous display windows, illuminating row upon row of dazzling, yet somehow muted dresses, coats, and suits. The overall space was minimal, but somehow everything fit together without feeling remotely crammed. The shop, like the sign, was kind and inviting. We soaked it all in with a sigh and set immediately to investigating. 

Noel’s style tended toward vintage and soft, and as soon as we found a dress that matched these criteria, as well as her personal palette, she pinched the skirt and pulled it away from its companions for closer inspection. Her pose at that moment matched that of a simple cartoon figure in a bright orange sign on the wall that suddenly barked at me from the corner of my eye. The sign announced that Noel was committing a cardinal sin. 

“Um,” I started to tell her. 

Now, I’ve had plenty of time to meditate carefully on the events that occurred next, yet I still cannot comprehend them. The corner we occupied had boxed us in, surrounding us with two floor-to-ceiling windows and the row of clothing. That left the entrance. 

I am by no means a small man. Though my mass has decreased by about 25 percent over the past year, my shoulders are still wide enough to clog the only means of access to this particular corner. Not even vision could get past me. 

And yet, with nary a gust of wind, temperature fell, Noel froze, and a crooked old crone appeared before us the tape measure around her neck flapping about. Without violence, but with extraordinary menace, she eased Noel away from the rack and spoke with a thick, Gallic accident. “You should probably read signs before you try to shop.” 

Both Noel and myself were prepared to offer up an apology, but that was not to be. 

“This is not how you look,” shopkeeper told us, pulling on the skirt like Noel and figure on the sign had done. “No!” Holding onto the dress’s padded wooden hanger, she lifted it from the rack. “You look like this.” With great specificity, she returned it to its proper place. “And leave three-fingers’ space between articles. They get wrinkled if you don’t.” She repeated the offending motions. “Not like this.” She lifted the hanger. “Like this.” 

Noel and I made eye contact with each other. 

“This is not a secondhand store,” the shopkeeper explained. “This is not some mass-produced cloth. “This …” Again, she tugged on the skirt. “… is very delicate fabric. When you do this …” Tug. “… You damage this very delicate fabric. Do you understand?” 

She might not agree, nor might she even care; but Noel did, in fact, understand. More importantly, she wanted to escape. She believed, as did I, that conceding the crone’s point would enable that. She opened her mouth to do so. 

Unfortunately the question had merely been hypothetical. The woman gestured around the entirety of the shop. “This here? This is France.” 

Believing still that freedom meant following along, we nodded. 

“You?” She pointed to Noel. “You are American.” 

This we could all agree on. 

“That is why this store is called ‘An American in Paris.’” She examined both of our faces for any sign of comprehension. Luckily I was an English major and Noel is a Fulbright scholar, so we did grasp the metaphor. “American,” the crone repeated, “in Paris.” 

Certain that all of these basic facts had been absorbed by her audience, she advanced the lesson by combining them. “This is how an American shops.” She yanked on the dress. “This is how you shop in France.” She removed the dress and replaced it. “America.” She tugged. “France.” Finally, she concluded the lesson. “You are not in America. You are in France.” 

Noel and I looked at each other while the shopkeeper regarded us carefully. The concept of being an American in Paris was a tricky one, and the ability of folks like us to get it might elude us.  

She pushed through me, reminding us one more time as she passed, “Not America; France.” 

Once we were in the clear, Noel whispered, “Think she can hear us right now?” 

“I don’t know what to think,” I whispered back. 

“Let’s hang out for a little while so she doesn’t think we’re scared of her,” she said, “and then get out of here and go someplace less traumatizing.” 

That place turned out to be the Holocaust Museum. 

Like a Grateful Dead Guitar Break …

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… it never ends. 

One of the most difficult parts of mental illness is that there is no cure. The talk therapies and medications and even exercise that can stabilize and control emotions are only treatments. Occasionally a sudden, inexplicable, rude reminder of this comes along and gooses me. 

And all I can do is sit down, grit my teeth, and try to breathe it  out. It’ll be better. It always is. 

Three Little Pieces of Sunshine

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I haven’t spoken to him since 2002. We didn’t have a fight or a falling out or anything spectacular like that; he just went about doing grownup things his way, and I went about doing grownup things my way. Recently, after a conversation with my wife, who knew him back in the day, I began to scour the Internets for him. It was shortly thereafter that he found me on Facebook. As is the case when rediscovering old friends through social networking, I took a look around his life, and that’s when I found a picture of his teenage daughter. 

She’s not the first child I know who’s grown up in the blink of an eye. There’s my ten-year-old niece, my best man’s twelve-year-old daughter, and my favorite college professor’s now sixteen-year-old son, for example. I don’t know why—most likely because I’ve had the pleasure of watching them transform—but seeing this young lady as a young lady really got under my skin, and it brought a lot back. 

In my collegiate youth, I was kind of (okay, very) moody. I’ve come to discover that this is a medical condition, but at that time, I just cycled and assumed I spent about half of my waking life as an asshole.  

Halfway through my sophomore year, in early 1996, I hit an upswing, cut my hair, wore some clothes with color, strapped on some confidence (albeit temporarily), and made some new friends. One of these had a freshman boyfriend who I knew I wasn’t going to get along with at all. For starters, he was a football player. Also, he was fit, both in athleticism and in the British sense of the word (i.e. hot); he was super-intelligent; and he was charming. Worst of all, he was genuinely kind, principled, and honest. So of course I hated him. And in no time at all, we were laughing, drinking, and smoking cigars together.  

That spring, I arranged to move into some off-campus, college-owned apartments, and I asked him to be my roommate. We found out quickly that sophomores were not permitted to live off campus, even in college-owned apartments. He persuaded the Dean of Housing to make an exception for him. (Have I mentioned that he was really, really persuasive?) 

Late summer, as football camp started up, he moved in, and he spent the next several weeks educating me on the finer points of the sport (which I’d never put much thought into before) and of East Coast versus West Coast (and “Mid Coast”— a term he invented) hip-hop. And all was good, until just before classes began, and his on-and-off-again girlfriend from back home was pregnant. 

So he did what any teenager would do: he quit the football team, brought her to his current home, found an apartment, found a job, and became a husband.* These things, of course, were all tricky: the first item because that robbed him of much of his financial assistance and social life; the second because he was asking her to leave her entire life behind to come to a place she knew nobody; the third because this was a college town, and there weren’t a lot of places to live for a family; the fourth because he would be supporting all two and a half of them, as well as his education, alone. The final proved to be exceptionally difficult, in that it cut him off from even more of his social life (at that age, nobody, including myself, understood why he would do all this). Also, his father, and his brother, aka his best man, were stranded in Colorado. 

The morning of his wedding, my friend showed up at my (formerly our) apartment, handed me a tuxedo, and said, “There’s been a change of plans.” If you’ve ever met this guy, you’d know that “There’s been a change of plans” coming from his mouth is the second most chilling phrase in the English language—the first being “We need to talk” coming from the mouth of a partner or spouse. And so I became his best man. To this day, pulling a toast out of my ass for the reception is one of my top-five achievements. 

They immediately became a unit. His identity was entirely husband and father; hers was entirely wife and mother; and this diminished them in no way whatsoever. In fact, it strengthened them. Most importantly, this unit was my friend.  

Our lives back then, as they are now, were separate from each other. For me the following years were full of turmoil, joy, and discovery. It was in the last year of college that I lost control over most of my life. His home (it wasn’t an apartment; it was a home) was safe. One of my favorite memories of that time, sitting cross-legged in the sun, chatting with her and watching the baby roll over. I don’t remember when exactly that was in my history, because the rest of that chaotic life didn’t exist inside those doors. Together, the three of them were vital to my survival back then, in ways I’ve never before expressed. 

I graduated, only barely; I became lost in my parents’ house; I became a man in New York; I became an adult and husband in my wife’s arms. Even though I’ve regenerated countless times, they’re the same: Her blue eyes are full of joy and excitement, even when she’s tired; his eyes are relaxed and confident; and the eyes of their baby, now a young woman, is full of life. They’re still a unit, and I can’t describe, no matter how much I want to, how happy that makes me. 

* Ha! Just kidding! Nobody would do that! 

Playing Catsup

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When I woke up this morning, I found myself remembering one of the more profound statements I’ve ever heard in my life.  The most alarming thing about this profound statement is that it involves ketchup. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh, no! He’s gone back on drugs!” I assure you this is not the case. 

To fully appreciate the wisdom of this profound statement, I need to give you a brief history of modern ketchup delivery. 

It used to be that ketchup lived in glass bottles. I say this as though it was ancient history, but think about it: when was the last time you’ve tried to shake ketchup out of a glass bottle? Shaking the glass bottle, in fact, is why they have become an endangered species, and it’s for the best.  

Ketchup is not beer, or even Worcester sauce. It is really thick, and so it gets stuck easily. When it does, air bubbles form in the neck, and so you either have to yank your arm up and down and hope the stuff doesn’t explode all over your plate, or you have to stick your knife inside, and now your knife is dirty, and that probably didn’t help anyway. 

Plastic is a different story. It’s easy to think that plastic is plastic; it’s been that way since the dawn of time—or at least since it was invented. In reality the technology is evolving. Where once it was ugly and weak and not particularly cheap, it is now ubiquitous and versatile. Therefore, at one point in history—in my admittedly short lifetime, in fact—the only place you could find plastic ketchup bottles were in dives, and they were refillable, opaque, ugly, and squeezed out this sad little red stream onto your burger and fries.  

Obviously this is no longer the case. Convenience and practicality has combined with chemistry. No one purchases a glass bottle for their home anymore, not even for nostalgia. Restaurants took longer to come to that conclusion, because even the greasiest of chain restaurants need to have an air of class. Plastic isn’t particularly classy, so these restaurants stuck stubbornly with the glass for a long time before giving way to the aforementioned practicality.  

About fifteen years ago, when I was still waiting tables, this switch hadn’t yet happened. Back then, a server’s job included dealing with the half-empty ketchup bottles. Since a half-empty bottle left on the table looks tacky and kind of cheap, they had to be refilled with ketchup from other partially empty bottles. This was known as marrying, because in the twentieth century, states had yet to amend their constitutions to declare that marriage was only between a man and a woman. 

Marrying ketchup wasn’t particularly easy. As I’ve said before, the stuff is thick and prone to getting bubbles in the neck. Wait staff quickly learned tricks to do this more efficiently—tricks I won’t go into here because I’ve already wasted enough words on this subject, and the concept is flat-out obsolete. And even with all of these tricks, the job was tedious and time-consuming, and just something you had to endure while you rolled silverware into cloth napkins and counted your tips. It is, however, a badge of honor for folks of a certain age. 

And so, one day during a lull at work (at a newspaper where these lulls tended to go on for quite some time), a friend once postulated, “Somewhere out there is the person who knows how to marry ketchup the fastest.” 

And if you think about everything I’ve just told you, you’d recognize just how profound this offhand comment really is.