Tag Archives: memoir

Cool Spots

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I’ve had a few days to think about this. On Thanksgiving, Dr. Darrel Lloyd, one of my professors and mentors at Hastings College, passed away at the age of 85 (I hope that’s a lesson to all you youngsters about the dangers of smoking). My contemporaries at Hastings who had even a passing crack at the English Department knew Dr. Lloyd. If you didn’t take one of his classes, he did an annual Christmas reading which was one part hilarious and two parts bolt-you-to-your-seat. He was a brilliant man, and funny, and kind, and all of the other things I’ve been hearing.  

But the thing that he was to me, as I’m sure he was to a lot of people, that isn’t really coming across in all of the memorials I’m seeing, is that he was hands-down the coolest professor at Hastings College, possibly ever. I can name a lot of cool professors, including Dr. Lloyd’s son, also Dr. Lloyd, as well as the father of one of my dear friends, and they were pretty great. But as far as turtleneck-and-tweed-jacket-wearing, slow-motion-strutting, lecturing-anywhere-in-the-room-but-behind-the-podium, laid-back-quip-at-exactly-the-right-moment, deep-sexy-voice cool, no one could beat Darrell Lloyd. He couldn’t have been cooler if he was in a band. No one will ever be that cool again. 

I won’t be in Hastings on December 15 to celebrate his life and his passing, but my heart will be there. Darrel Lloyd will be there too, in the back, slouched down on his seat, taking it all in and being the coolest ghost in the Midwest. 

Life’s a Musical

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I’m generally a happy person. My life is challenging, but I mostly get to do what I want, and I’m surrounded by good people. But find me on my commute and I get exceedingly crotchety and cranky. I don’t get violent, I become like Tommy Lee Jones in any movie that Tommy Lee Jones has ever starred in. And considering what a public transit commute is like in any big city, who can blame me? I keep to myself, I don’t jostle anyone, and I get home to my big, adorable, stupid cat, and everything is good again. 

There’s this thing, though, that I never noticed during my time served in New York, and that’s the singing. This usually happens at night, but it can pop up any time. Someone, of any age, with earpods in their ears, will start belting out, at the top of their lungs, and usually not very well, whatever they’re listening to. It’s loud enough to pierce through my podcast, and it drives me insane. It also puts me in a dilemma. I encourage self-expression, however you want to do it, from wearing colorful shoes to dancing on the sidewalk. This, though, is kind of awful. Even when the singer has talent, it’s kind of awful. I can’t maintain my bubble if someone keeps popping it with whatever the latest star has to say this month. There’s a reason playing music without headphones is illegal on the Metro.  

There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not about to tell a Metro agent about it, because what are they going to do about it? And even if they could, am I really the kind of person who wants to penalize someone for doing something that makes them happy? No, I’m not a Republican. The good news is, it doesn’t happen very often, maybe three times a month. It’s a temporary nuisance when it does happen. So I just suck it up and mutter under my breath. Joy is a challenge to come by, and they found it, even it’s just for the length of this track. 

Oh, now they’re singing the next song on the playlist? Goddammit! 

Revision Quest

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“How would you do it?” asks the woman who is showing me the ropes. “Why don’t you give it a try?” 

And so I return to my desk and spend a while coming up with a two-sentence blurb about our new podcast, featuring the phrase, “… a companion to the journal.” I send it back to her, and she says, “This is perfect, run it past the boss.” This is going to take a while. If I’ve learned anything these past five days, it’s that the boss is a reviser, almost pathologically so. Obviously it got her where it got her, so I have to keep that in mind, but I was prepared for some back-and-forth that would go on for hours.  

About forty-five minutes later, the boss props herself up on my desk and states, “Here’s the thing. It’s not a ‘companion.’ We need another word.” 

“Supplement?” I suggest. 

“No, it’s not a supplement either.” She then lists all of the reasons that the podcast doesn’t qualify as a supplement.  

“So what is it then?” I ask. 

She then proceeds to give me a perfect, literal definition of a companion podcast and concludes with, “See? Not a companion.” Since I couldn’t think of any other word, especially given her explanation, we agreed just to remove the offending phrase altogether. The rest of the blurb went in unmolested. 

I say this without irony or snark—I think I’m going to fall in love with this job. 

Interview with the Temp

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I had a job interview this morning, and unlike most job interviews, it was pretty clear what they thought of me as it went on. This is how it went: I was seen by one person who asked me questions and described the job. She went downstairs to get her boss. Fifteen minutes later, her boss sits down with my resume and says, for real, “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what you’re doing here.” She says that my editing background is solid and tells me all the ways this isn’t an editing job for about ten minutes before she lets me explain that I wasn’t there as an editor. She then brings me to her associate who is not sure he fully understands my jump from editing to administrative work. 

After they send me on my way, I call the recruiter who set up the interview and tell her how disappointed I am. Had they not seen my resume before calling me in? This was kind of a waste of my time. The recruiter told me to hold, her boss was on the line, and when she returned, she told me that was the job asking when I could start.  

It was quite the roller coaster this morning. 

Putting it to Rest

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I realized I’m missing something: I have no ritual, no way of marking the occasion when I finish writing a novel. Since early 2018, I’ve completed six of them, and I’m a few pages away from I realized I’m missing something: I have no ritual, no way of marking the occasion when I finish writing a novel. Since early 2018, I’ve completed six of them, and I’m a few pages away from my seventh—which I will likely finish at work because it is so slow there—and the only thing I do when I’m finished writing one is flip the page and get started on the next one. I don’t go out partying with friends because I don’t have any friends to party with, I don’t treat myself to a nice dinner because I do that whenever I want (or never now that I’m broke), and I don’t pop open a bottle of champagne for obvious reasons. I don’t even give the book a once-over and prepare it for publication because a) I wait months before I reread something I’ve written, and b) it’s not getting published. (I love to write. I write not to be read, but for the act of writing itself.) I kind of wish I had something to do, though. I feel like writing an entire novel is something to be celebrated. 

Memories Fade, Part 2

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I hate this day. I hate it so much. In August, I usually start dreading it and wondering how I’m going to feel this year. It’s been eighteen years. 9/11 is old enough to vote. It doesn’t haunt me most of the time, it doesn’t drive me to drink. I hardly think of it anymore. But I’ll never forget. And still that date rolls around. 

It’s just a normal day anymore, with the exception of Twitter and Facebook remembrances (like this one), but I want the world to stop. I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want anybody to go to work. I don’t want people to have Meet-ups or dates or parties. I don’t even know what I want people to do instead, I just don’t want them pretending that nothing happened today. 

Maybe it’s because I was there. I took the train to the World Trade Center stop only a half-hour earlier. I heard the plane crash into Tower 2 and carried on stuffing envelopes like nothing happened. I evacuated my building and looked up at the double-landmark I knew and trusted as my compass in New York City on fire. I was almost hit by a smoldering cell phone case that someone was likely wearing on their belt when they died. I thought the world was coming to an end. 

But it didn’t. And here we are. We got revenge on the people who caused it (as well as a whole lot of people who had nothing to do with it). Presidencies were won and lost. The Right went back to hating New York for being a bastion of moral depravity. The city rebuilt. And September 11 is just a normal day anymore.  

This anniversary makes me feel so lonely. It doesn’t seem like anyone else feels as intensely as I do about today, not after almost twenty years. And how would anyone know how I felt? I’m pretty good at hiding it. Most of the people I’ve met over the past ten years have no idea what I went through that day. I don’t have anybody to talk to about it, and even if I did, I don’t know what I’d say. I can’t even write a coherent blog post after counting down to today working on it.  

It’s been a long time. Never Forget. 

Memories Fade, Part 1

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I don’t want to be the guy who dwells on bad news and trauma, but this is something I’ll never forget. Part of it is because I literally watched it happen, and eighteen years isn’t enough to erase those images and those smells from my memory. I don’t think of it often as time has gone on, but on this date, I always do, and I feel really lonely anymore.  

Nobody checks to see how I’m doing whenever this day comes around, a day I start feeling the dread for around late August. (Although, to be fair, hardly anybody I’ve met over the past ten years knows about my experiences with it.) (Also, I’m willing to bet that the people who are aware of it don’t know what to say or assume that I don’t want to talk about it.) I’d be happy to talk about it, but that’s not the kind of thing you can just bring up, especially given how complicated the emotions are attached to it.  

And suddenly it arrives, and it’s nothing. There’s not a lot about it on social media anymore, and on the news, it’s mentioned pretty casually, before moving onto the next dumb-ass tweet from our president. But this was the defining event of twenty-first-century America. This mess we’re in right now directly ties back to what was planned in that cave almost twenty years ago. (September 11 led to the Iraq War, which was responsible for the election of Barack Obama, which was responsible for the election of Donald Trump and everything that has come with him. That’s just simplifying it.) Three thousand people died that day. Three hundred police and firefighter ran into the buildings I was running from, and they paid the price for their bravery. How do you forget that? 

I’m sorry. I just hate this day with a passion, and it’s just weird to me that it’s no big deal anymore. 

Modest Tea

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I’m not a success by any means. I’m only a marginally published author, and I don’t think I’ll be published any more than I already have been. I’m not an artist, not anymore, even after all the work I put into it over the past ten years. I’m divorced and living in the curtained-off living room of a one-bedroom apartment, most of my stuff in storage. I can’t get a job, despite four solid months of looking—though I do have insurance and some work at The Container Store. The Murphy name terminates with me, in that I have no children.  

When my ancestors, who fought and toiled their way through Ireland and Poland to get to the United States and battled in wars and suffered to bring me to being, look at me, will they be disappointed?  

Probably not, because I’m happy. I’ve got a lot to worry about, but I live a good life. I have lived a good life. I’ve seen the world. I lived in one of the most exciting cities on the planet for six years. I’m living in an exciting city now. I’ve met countless people who have enriched my life. I’ve written six novels and am in the home stretch of a seventh. I’ve got a cat who may be the most annoying animal in the world, but he is the most precious thing to me. My roommate is the Queen of Cracking Me Up.  

I know that my ancestors would see that I’m not toiling in a field eighteen hours a day, that I had married for love, that I’m broke but not starving, that my name and my memory will carry on long after I’m dead because of the people I’ve touched—not just because of genetics, that I can turn my dreams into words that live in my hard drive, but may go elsewhere, who knows, I’m not counting anything out. They would see all of this and breathe a sigh of relief. They would be proud. They may not understand things like cafes, but they would be proud that I go to them so frequently and drown myself in my imagination. They would be proud that I made something of myself. That something may not be CEO or bestselling novelist, but it’s enough. It’s all I want*.  

And so, on this, my forty-third birthday, I give myself a slow clap. I did it—I kept it together, despite how hard the world (and my biology) have made it. That calls for some cake. 

_________________________ 

* Well, that and a freaking job. 

Something About a Bullfrog

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One of the advantages of having such an unusual name is that, when I hear someone say “Jeremiah,” I’m 80 percent certain they’re talking to or about me. So I’m trained to react to it like a dog reacts to its own name.  

That’s why I was in a state of such high alert when the lacrosse bros were sitting behind me in the cafe, having a long, detailed conversation about their bro, Jeremiah. I was so tense and unfocused while they were there that I don’t think I wrote more than a paragraph. By the time they wrapped up, I was a wreck, relieved that they and their bro were gone. 

Taking their place were a middle-aged lady and a teenage boy who, based on their conversation, were a church youth leader and a church youth. They talked about, at length, a fellow youth named Jeremiah. Was this this same Jeremiah as bro Jeremiah? It doesn’t matter. I have a repetitive stress injury from my ears perking up every time they heard that name.  

I don’t think I can adequately express the amount of anxiety that hearing my name coming from strangers causes me. That’s why I avoid wearing my name tag at work. It’s been literally years since I’ve heard my name spoken about a person who wasn’t me, so the bombardment gave me a bit of a complex. That’s why I was so relieved to go to work that evening, where people don’t ever use my name, even when they are referring to me. 

Uncle Larry

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I’m terrible about keeping in touch with people. If you’re not on Facebook, and, hell, even if you are on Facebook, you’re not going to hear much from me. I say this because it’s been years and years since I’ve talked to my uncle Larry, and now he’s gone.  

For about a half-decade he was the most important man in my life. I was living alone in New York, and the holidays struck violently as they always struck, but Uncle Larry always threw a holiday party for his extended family the weekend before Christmas, and I was always invited. Even when it wasn’t Christmas, I visited him and his mother and father, living together in a tiny house in Linden, New Jersey, quite frequently, and, even though he had a plethora of kids of his own, he treated me like a son. This had been going on a while. When I was just learning language far too long ago, he and his wife, my late aunt Christine, would call me “Jeremiah James Murphy Dukes,” to which I’d reply, emphatically, “No Dukes! No Dukes!” This continued well into my adulthood. 

Larry Dukes was a kind, generous man who believed in the power of family, and he didn’t define family as rigorously as some might. He let people in constantly, even when those around him were skeptical. I’d tell you some of these amazing stories and how much brighter everybody’s life was because of his openness, but they’re not my stories to tell. 

I’m trying to think of more examples of what an incredible man my uncle was, but all I’m doing is choking up. Most of what I remember about him can be distilled into feelings—feelings of safety and joy and warmth, a feeling like I belonged (something especially precious when you’re living in a city that wants you to feel alone). I can’t describe how happy I was spending time in his house on Ainsworth Street. 

He’s had a lot of hardship in his life, which he endured alone because he never wanted to be a burden on others, like the idiot he was. But now I like to think that he’s finally resting. If Uncle Larry is reading Facebook in heaven (he never did on Earth, though, so why should that change?), I hope can see how much I love him. 

Post Script: A memory of Uncle Larry that sticks with me occurred at his father’s funeral. We were following the casket out of the church, and I found myself walking alongside him. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was—John Beck was also an incredible man—both for his loss and for all the loss he’d suffered in recent years. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, and I supported him, and I would do anything he needed. I wanted to tell him just how important he was to me. But there were no words that this writer could think of that would efficiently communicate that, and besides, this was a quiet time. So I put my hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. He nodded. We’d said everything that needed to be said. I’ve been touched by that head nod for almost two decades.