By July 2007, it became clear because reasons that I had little control when it came to alcohol. Kate asked me to take a month off, and I agreed. However, I wasn’t particularly consistent with this.
One evening, I realized that I couldn’t be trusted, and that I was only cheating myself, and that I needed to walk away forever if I was going to change for the better. Eight years later, I’m feeling pretty good about this decision.
My spouse and I just returned from a cruise of the Mediterranean, and I was shocked to find out we were not the youngest couple there–not by a long shot. This was good, because it helped me stave off my midlife crisis just a little longer. This was bad because, just once, I was hoping to be the baby again, like I had been in my New York social circle so long ago. Regardless, cruisin’ and touristin’ it up were a blast*, and I was not happy to return home.
Here are just ten random thoughts from my trips ashore.
There is, frankly, too much to get into here, and that’s because Oh my God, I got, like, three acceptance letters while I was on vacation as well as an editor who wants me to slightly revise a romance story I’d submitted to her anthology (mostly I need to make the hanky-panky at the climax—Ha! “Climax”!—a little hankier-pankier). That puts me at six-and-a-half acceptances. Maybe I am on a hot streak.
Also, Venice is really weird, guys. It’s like an alien snatched up intimate corners of Europe–people from every race, buildings from every century, pillars from ancient Rome, weather from wherever—plopped these things onto a swamp, linked everything together with an inconceivable variety of bridges, applied gondolas, and opened it up to tourists. I totally want to live there.
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* So much food. So. Much. Regret.
I moved to Indiana only a few short months after Newcastle was born, and a few weeks after my spouse invited him into her home. We quickly became best friends—even though he’s a cat. But we have so much in common. Like me, he is big, clumsy, and bipolar.
He’s not the only cat. Since 2000 he has had two brothers—Andrew and Magik—who have graciously allowed me to live in their home.
And so the five of us have grown older together, and unlike the people in the house, the cats have maintained perfect health, despite the fact that two of them are senior citizens. I should be bracing myself for their inevitable retirement, but I’m starting to believe they’re going to live forever.
We had moved into the Washington DC metro area the year before, and I had yet to settle in. I’d been unemployed for the most part (this is by choice, since we could afford it), and we’d not really found any friendships that had stuck. And so, while my spouse was working overseas and left me alone for a few months during the autumn and winter of 2009, I had a breakdown.
It was the cats who kept me grounded, particularly Newcastle, who follows me around like he’s my sidekick. I don’t know what I’ve done to earn his affection, but I’ll always be grateful. In fact, during my first session with a new psychiatrist, he asked me what my goal was, and I said I wanted to be as good a person my cat thinks I am. When he tells me to find my “happy place,” it’s Newcastle massaging my neck and purring, like he does every night before I fall asleep.
We’ve been living in Qatar for the past two and a half years. I won’t go into details here about how things have gone, suffice it so say that there have challenging at times, and once again, it’s been Newcastle, et al, to the rescue. We’re headed back to the States mid-June, and for some pretty logical-but-convoluted reasons, we’ve sent the cats back early—as in this past Thursday. Our schedule’s been nuts over the past few days, so I’ve barely noticed their absence. But when life returns to normal starting Wednesday, and I’m all alone in the empty house …
I’ve never been apart from them—and they me—for more than a few weeks in a row before, so six weeks is going to be particularly brutal. They’re with friends who love them and whom they love, so I’m not particularly worried about them. But man I miss these guys.
In the fall of 1994, I met someone*. We dated, but that didn’t work out in the long run. Life got in the way. Eventually, after some work and some time, we became friends again.
Six years later, we enjoyed a very long weekend together, but that didn’t work out in the long run. Life got in the way. Eventually, after some work and some time, we became friends again.
Four years after that, we enjoyed another long weekend together. Life, as it does, threatened to get in the way, but this time, we told it to go fuck itself. We became more than just friends, and we were going to keep it that way.
Less than a year later, on April 30, 2005, we said “I do.”
A full decade later, we have fought tooth and nail, through better and through worse, through sickness and through health, through thick and through thin. We have supported, excited, impressed, entertained, and loved. We’ve traveled so far, learned so much, and have come home to each other. We’ve been friends and lovers on-and-off for over twenty years, and husband and wife for ten.
It’s our anniversary, and a damned happy one.
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* Spoiler Alert! It’s my spouse.
I’d been having a day full of traffic stress and other such inconveniences that low blood sugar transforms into Godzilla-level disasters, leading me to a mild panic attack. I had to get out of my truck, and so I (safely) abandoned it and hauled ass to the closest place to get a sandwich and a smoothie.
A few bites and sips later, manager of the cafe dropped by my table to instruct me on the proper use of a glass catsup bottle. Just before he left me to my fries, he shyly inquired, “If you don’t mind, I was hoping you could help us with something we need to know.”
“Sure,” I say. After all, he did outwit the catsup for me. Besides, I was curious.
“Do you say ‘d-OHN-key,’ or ‘d-AHN-key’?”
“Um,” I reply. I now had a few questions of my own, but they were better left unasked.
But the story didn’t end there. Because after lunch, I took a walk and stopped in a Starbuck’s for a coffee and a half-hour with my new sketchbook. The barista consulted me on something she could not comprehend at all, which was the American obsession with pumpkin-flavoring every autumn.
And so, all it took to wipe away all the stress and tension of the previous ninety minutes was a brief discussion of the regional accents and seasonal flora of my home country. Seriously, I forgot why I had this headache.
I overheard the following exchange this morning between Kate and Henry the kitten:
“MEOOOOOOOWL!”
“I’m not letting you in!”
“MEOOOOOOOWL!”
“I’m allowed to go to the bathroom alone!”
“MEOOOOOOOWL!”
“Go away!”
“MEOOOOOOOWL!”
I then heard the sound of a door opening and closing.
“Happy now?”
“Mew!”
Chapter 1: I settled down to a nice lunch of leftover Nando’s chicken. Unbeknownst to me, Newcastle somehow stole and hid a skin-covered bone—which, in retrospect, explains why he stopped bothering me about it all of a sudden.
Chapter 2: While I went to the gym, Kate settled down to a nice dinner of the rest of the leftover Nando’s. Assuming this meant it was chicken-time for everyone, Newcastle retrieved the skin-covered bone from its hiding place and happily trotted around the living room with it.
Chapter 3: Kate chased down and caught Newcastle, removing his prize from his mouth. I’m assuming the soundtrack to this was “Yakety Sax” by Boots Randolph.
Chapter 4: I returned from the gym to Kate on the couch with a look on her face that said, very clearly, “You need to control your pet.” I shuffled to the bedroom to Newcastle on the floor with a look on his face that said, very clearly, “You need to control your pet.”
I kind of thought Rita looked like an elf. She had that slim build, sharp features, and short, dark hair. She could have been a Vulcan, but Vulcans didn’t smile that much.
On September 11, 2001, I’d spent that particular day assuring everybody I was fine and calming down those who didn’t see it like I did. I told myself that their fear was more justified than mine because they didn’t see what I saw, and on that day I drank as soon as I could. Two days later, when I finally made it home, I found my stash of marijuana and lit it up. The rest of the time I consoled my girlfriend Andrea, whose birthday was September 13.
And so, two weeks later, when Katherine O’Shea threw a party for herself and everyone who missed out on their own birthday, I sought out the most cheerful people I could find. That person was Rita and her companion Anne Marie, out on the smoking deck.
I was on fucking fire. Were I not attached, I may have made a move on either of them. And, frankly, I feel lucky that it was them, because they took it in stride. My flirtation didn’t come across as creepy so much as it did all in good fun. Fun is the operative word here, because that’s what drew me to her, time and time again. And it didn’t hurt that she was cute.
Shane took it upon himself to familiarize me with two important aspects of the city—the first being the subway system.
“Don’t worry,” he said as I squinted at something on the wall of a subway car that appeared to be a Jackson Pollack painting superimposed over a map of Manhattan. “You’ll get it if you just take your time with it. Just take the trains you need, and you’ll learn the hubs and connections.” His finger traced a strip of blue and stopped at a dot that said 135 BC.
“A hundred and thirty-five years before the birth of Jesus?” I asked myself, but not aloud. As a resident for forty hours, I figured it was time to act like I knew what I was doing.
“That’s where my dealer is,” he explained.
I nodded like someone who actually understood. We exited the train and headed up the street. “He gets a little freaked out when he sees new people, so just wait by the entrance and look inconspicuous.”
Harlem, New York, hosted Louis Farrakhan’s One Million Youth civil rights march that afternoon. Shane, whose blond hair, blue eyes, and the complexion of someone who saw the sun rarely—which fed into the speculation that we were siblings—dove into the crowd and left me alone on the sidewalk, humming, sweating, and avoiding eye contact. He returned after what could have been hours and hustled me downstairs.
By three a.m. on January 1, 2003, the afterglow of a very long night faded as empty taxi after empty taxi zipped past the vacant cab stand. My girlfriend, awesome sister, and I looked perfectly normal, like young partygoers who would leave tips, so we weren’t the problem. No, the problem was the pair in the front of the line.
Had I actually used drugs that evening, I would have assumed the black man wearing only a vinyl diaper and a bowler hat and his companion, the man with the striped three-piece suit, the sleek blond hair, the fangs, and the pointy ears of an elf were a hallucination. However, by that point, a journey across three subway trains, two rivers, and the width of Manhattan had sobered us completely up, and I was forced to accept their veracity.
“What the fuck?” growled my sister Rachel.
“I don’t even…” I sighed.
My girlfriend Coral didn’t say a word. She ran off to the sidewalk, flagged down a taxi, and beckoned us furiously. Rachel and I hesitated, but once the vampire and his minion noticed these events and lunged toward Coral, we understood the stakes.
“Hurry!” yelled the driver.
We dove in and slammed the door. “Britton Street!” I told him.
The vampire’s cane struck the hood of the car, and he bellowed, “You shall not pass!”
“Go!” Rachel shouted.
A strange peace washed over me at that moment, surrounded by the big city and the two women who, at that juncture, knew me better than anyone.
Jeremiah Murphy 