Tuesday Is Recycling Day

Proof that things rarely turn out the way we plan.

"A Life More Ordinary" (Originally Published, 8.22.06)

This will not be the finest thing I've ever written; on the contrary, it will probably wind up being hackneyed and silly. Consider yourself warned.

I'm somewhere around 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean and I'm exhausted as hell. As usual, my iPod is connected directly to my eardrums and a couple of seconds ago Simon & Garfunkel's haunting masterpiece Scarborough Fair gave way to Radiohead's Everything in its Right Place. As usual, it would seem that gods equal parts loving and vengeful are also possessed of a sick sense of irony.

Exactly five years and one lifetime ago, I was entering the final week of a month-long stint at a South Florida rehab center -- the culmination of a nine month and nearly $200-a-day heroin addiction. I see no reason to go into the lurid details of what I experienced in rehab -- what I gained and lost, the depths of human suffering and heights of human resilience I witnessed; suffice to say that by the time of my unremarkable departure from the public facility which had been kind enough to house my racked body and mind for nearly a month, I was lucid enough to realize that one of the reasons I didn't want to do heroin anymore was the simple fact that if I lived an eternity never having to go through the fucking nightmare of rehab again, it still wouldn't put enough figurative and literal distance between myself and the experience.

Right after leaving rehab, my father and I hopped a plane back to Los Angeles with the intention of cleaning out what little was left of my life there in the wake of my soon-to-be ex-wife's unceremonious departure, which occurred about halfway through my little vacation from the daily grind of being a pathetic addict. The plan was simple: Dad and I would fly out to L.A., salvage what we could, write the rest off, then drive back to South Florida where I would begin my new life as an unemployed shell whose days would consist mainly of staring at the TV and contemplating suicide -- not necessarily in that order. All in all, it was a good plan -- a roadtrip even Dennis Hopper would find surreal. An ex-Navy SEAL and his junkie son -- all gone to look for America.

The reason this happens to be on my mind right now -- the obligation to celebrate such a momentous anniversary notwithstanding -- is because I distinctly remember the drive to the airport; it very well could have been the lowest point in the sad history of low points throughout my life. For some reason, the painfully generic AOR station in South Florida at the time chose to play A Perfect Circle's 3 Libras as we approached Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywoood International Airport, inadvertently providing the perfect soundtrack to the tiny tragedy unfolding in the lives of two people who just happened to be listening that morning. That drive to the airport -- that entire trip back to the place I called home at the time -- was nothing less to me than an outright admission of failure: I had failed in my career, in my marriage, in my life. I was simply going back to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess.

This morning's drive to the airport had no such soundtrack, unless you count the sound of the pounding rain on the windshield; no life-altering body-blow precipitated it; there was no punishing sense of impending doom; it was simply my father driving my wife and me to the ostensible end of our mini-vacation. Yet this morning's drive was an infinitely more painful experience than that nearly identical trip five years ago.

The reason for this is the stuff of worthless Dr. Phil shows, bad screenplays and "A Very Special Facts of Life". See, when you finally learn to care for someone or something other than yourself -- when you find something greater and more important than bullshit self-reliance -- you open yourself up to a world of hurt like nothing you'd previously imagined. Excuse the triteness, but it would seem that Uncle Ben's advice to young Peter Parker cuts both ways: It's true that with great power comes great responsibility, but it's equally true that with great responsibility comes great power. For most of my 36 years on this planet, I never bothered to willingly take on any responsibility, for exactly that reason: I didn't want that kind of power over anyone's life other than my own. I made commitments, but only in a perfunctory sort of way. I made promises, but always surreptitiously left myself an open back door. I made a hell of a lot of excuses for my rotten behavior; typically those excuses were so damned clever that rather than balk at them, I admired my own ingenuity at their creation. My life was always mine to make or break, and it was good that way. It was an entertaining, ongoing dramedy of which I was the lead and just about anyone else merely played the necessary role which I had assigned them. Characters came and went -- some were killed-off or written out, some just gave-up and walked away -- but the star of the show always remained.

This was why, no matter how many disastrous turns I took in life, I always seemed to come through like the proverbial cat landing on its feet.*

Despite coming off of a fall that would've made Icarus flinch, this outlook on life was still very much intact in September of 2001, when I made the decision to come to New York in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In fact, New York, I quickly learned, was the perfect place in which to lovingly nurture the hell out of an attitude like this. True, it was a city in excruciating pain, but it was also a city in which a person could easily vanish and reappear at will, occasionally as an entirely different entity altogether. It was a perpetual playground which provided a mammoth new backdrop for my little one-man show. As a single guy with a great job and a new lease on life, New York City was my fucking town.**

Then I met Jayne.

I wish I could humbly claim that I retired the Me-and-Me Against the World mindset the moment she spoke my name, but unfortunately that's just not the case. In spite of the fact that I loved her passionately, I initially loved her somewhat selfishly. She never deserved to be part of the rotating cast of characters in my show, and yet for the first year or so that's what I might have considered her, even if she never knew it. I can't tell you exactly when things changed. I'm not quite sure when my love for her began eclipsing my concern for myself -- as well as for anyone or anything else. I do know however that these days her life and her needs -- as well as our life together -- are of a singular import to me; I will fight to the death for her and to keep us intact. She and I are a family.

And therein lies the issue.

New York is a whirlwind, and when you stand alone in that whirlwind it's highly unlikely that you'll be pulled into pieces. Try hanging on to another person, though, and see what happens. There are those here who don't see a young married couple as a family -- they look upon it with a jaded eye and a natural assumption that it's nothing more than a divorce waiting to happen. At the risk of over-generalizing, New York City is a single person's town. The place is certainly greased for bringing people together, but keeping them together is a different story entirely. Once upon a time, Jayne and I fantasized about being that old couple you see holding hands, walking through Central Park. The problem is this: you only see that couple in movies and commercials. Most elderly couples you stumble across in New York City fit another stereotype altogether -- it's the one in which the two people involved can't live with each other, but they apparently can't live without each other either. This was never the kind of relationship I imagined being involved in as I slipped into my twilight years.

What my wife and I want instead are things which might have seemed painfully dull to us years ago -- things like stability and the love of good friends and the support of a caring extended family. We want a child of our own, and we want to raise him or her in a nurturing environment. We want to be able to come home from work and see each other, rather than face the near-constant onslaught of a work schedule which never seems to end and employers who expect unconditional submission to that fact. Quite simply, we want a life.

This undeniable truth is the reason why our ride to the airport this morning was so difficult; we just didn't want to come back.

I love New York -- but I love her more. She loves New York -- but she loves me more.

Everything is most certainly not in its right place -- but it soon will be.

*It's worth mentioning that while I've come through quite a bit in my lifetime, I've never had the colossal nerve to be self-congratulatory about this fact. I've always believed that you forfeit the privilege of calling yourself a survivor when in fact the only things you've survived are your own personal catastrophes.

**Every unattached idiot thinks this. Finding an arrogant moron in New York City who flaunts his supposed ownership of the place is about as common as finding a deli which advertises the World's Best Coffee -- and it's just ridiculous a claim to make.

Just as an admittedly sad, to say nothing of ironic, aside -- here was Jayne's own comment on the this piece, from August of '06:

"We both still love New York for the part that it's played in our lives, and for all the wonderful things that it is. But now we look at everything from a parental perspective- and the frustrating truth is that if we really want a FAMILY, which we'd like to start within the next year, we just can't afford to do it in the way that we'd like while living in new york city. As it is we don't have the time or energy to really enjoy each other- how are we going to have the energy for our kid(s)?

This is the underlying reason for all of this- the reality is that with our lives the way that they are here, we can't be the good parents that we want to be. I hope that you can understand this. I grew up in the suburbs in Pennyslvania- with a yard and a dog, etc etc... I do not want to raise a child in a one-bedroom apartment. and neither does chez.

we'll always be grateful to new york for restoring chez's vitality, (and mine as well, for different reasons. but this isn't my forum...), and we'll always want to visit.

I'm grateful for how chez has changed over the years- his priorities have changed drastically, and so have mine. we are family now, and we'd like to be around people who see us as such. we spent the last weekend around true friends and family- people who love US, not just one of us individually. it was a healthy environment and that's what we miss. For those of you who we were with who may be reading this- I can't thank you enough. Hopefully we'll see you all again soon."

Incidentally, yes, that's Jayne in the above photo. It was taken by me in London. Also, I've disabled comments for this repost. Given all that's transpired since it was originally published, this little piece of history is now just for reading, not for publicly commenting on.