Note: I intended this to run a couple of weeks ago,
when it was actually my birthday.
Instead I wrote this post and wrote it and wrote it with no end in
sight. Sometimes a thought just takes
off and mutates and forms a life of its own and I find is it’s just best to let
it run its course. This is such a
post. I’m still working on it, but I it
cut off here and call this Part 1. I
hope you like it.
I just turned
36.
No, I don’t
make a big deal about my birthday.
No, I’m not fishing for a ‘happy birthday’. I genuinely do not make a big deal out of my
birthday, even when I was a kid. I never
had a birthday party. It didn’t really
bother me that I didn’t. When I turned
11, my parents forgot my birthday. For
real. It hurt, but not because it was
necessarily my birthday. It just hurt
that they forgot something that had to do with me. But the birthday thing? As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another
day. With cake after supper. And after I got married, I cooked my own
birthday supper and did my own birthday dishes.
That was equal parts sad and amusing.
But this birthday is a little significant,
as exactly half my lifetime ago that I turned 18, and officially entered adulthood. A lot of people fantasize about going back to
the past and having a conversation with their 18 year old selves and I am no
different. Truth be told, I have a hard
time picturing my 18 year old self. I
can barely remember him. Bits and pieces
mostly, and the most general feeling of being lost and lonely. Not surprising as I had been living in a
different city almost a 1000 miles away since a few months previous. I had been staying with my best friend’s
brother and his crazy girlfriend crammed into a small two bedroom apartment. In two weeks’ time, I’d show up to my dishwashing
job to find the doors locked and a bailiff’s seizure notice on the door, and
then I’d be working in a sheet metal factory on the midnight shift. It was an awful job, but it paid decently, at
least for an 18 year old kid. If my life
had a soundtrack, The Boxer would definitely be the lead single.
When I left my home and my family
I was
no more than a boy
In
the company of strangers
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where
the ragged people go
Looking
for the places only they would know
I imagine we’d meet in the bar we (‘we’ being
myself, my roommates and the couple of friends I’d managed to make in the three
months I’d been there) frequented that was a couple of blocks away from our
apartment (for God’s sake, drink a better beer!). You were probably tired – I remember you
being so tired for a young kid of 18.
You were working so much and you really didn’t know anyone yet except
for your roommates and a couple of guys you worked with who you hung out once
in a while. You spent your free time
just walking the streets, getting to know a strange city, with a mumbling
monologue in your head that was a cross between Jack Kerouac and Travis Bickle,
smoking yourself stupid and starting to imbibe in drugs a wee bit more than
recreationally.
I sit down across from my 18 year old self,
coughing at the never-ending cigarette smoke wafting from him.
36:
Hey, see this? I hold up my right hand. My pinkie finger slants off to the right away
from the other fingers. I cannot
straighten it so it touches the other ones.
A long time ago, I beat the shit out of my dad so badly he wound up in
the hospital for a few days. This is why
I’m here, and not still at home. I
damaged my hand – to what degree I never found out, because I never got it
looked at. But my right hand will never
be the same again. I can use it okay,
but it aches terribly on cold days. Yup.
It’s screwed.
18: Draws
from his cigarette. He likes to think
he’s got a touch of James Dean about him, but he really doesn’t. He’s a kid barely out of short pants with
moderately bad acne, stilted, awkward movements, a nervous laugh and reeking of
self-doubt. Damn. Still?
He looks at his own right
hand. It throbs slightly.
36:
So? Anything you’d like to ask
me? I’m sure you do.
18:
Am I ever going to get another
girlfriend?
36:
Yes. Very soon, you’ll fall head
over heels in love with a girl. You’ll
say goofy, lovey-dovey shit that you thought you’d never say. You’ll lie in bed together after hours of hot
sex with her head on your chest and you’ll feel like you’re the king of the
world. Content and peaceful.
18:
Is she cute?
36:
She’s gorgeous. Absolutely
stunning.
18:
Wow… how long do we go out? Are
you still with her?
36:
You guys dated for a little over 3 months
18:
That’s it? What happened?
36:
You wanna know?
18:
Yep.
36: Quietly.
She fucked two guys at a party so she could share some of
their crack.
18:
Oh… shit… really?
36:
She felt bad enough about it to confess to you, before you found
out. Trust me, that’s something at
least. She had an addiction, and
addiction leads people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. She was still responsible for her actions,
though. Let’s change the subject…
18:
Do we get married?
36:
Yep. This one was more of a slow
burn, but eventually you fall head over heels in love again. We marry at 27,
have two kids, divorce at 34. Another
cheater. Except this one lied until the
very end, and to this very day.
18: Wow…
is this just what happens to us? We date
cheaters?
36:
Hmm. It becomes something that
you become very wary of. You build walls
and push good and bad women away because you fear getting hurt and betrayed
again. But there are a couple of others
in between, ones that end amicably. In a
couple of years, dad will apologize to you and you’ll go back to Winnipeg Winnipeg
At university you’ll meet a lot of people,
and specifically two women you become involved with. The first one is Mary, whom you have your
first year English class with and carry a friendship with to this day. You don’t ‘date’. You’re technically ‘friends with benefits’. Fuck buddies.
Whatever you want to call it. You
carry on like this for 4 years. The only
rule is no sex if either one of us is dating.
Believe it or not, this relationship works out tremendously well. She graduated and left to work at a newspaper
in a city out east. You didn’t talk
throughout your marriage because your ex-wife was really jealous of other
women, but you talk now. She is married
although her marriage seems to be falling apart too. Although this arrangement worked out well,
you were always privately a little miffed that you two didn’t do the usual
boyfriend/girlfriend stuff.
The other woman is Kim. You actually date this one for 6 months,
which is a record for you. You are wary
of falling in love with anyone, but she is loving and patient and kind and she
peels away your layers like an onion, very gently, before you even know what’s
happening. She is older, 29 to your 21,
finishing her Masters degree in anthropology while you’re in your second year
as an undergrad. She lives in another
province and is moving back at the end of the school year. The clock ticks on your relationship, so you
cherish and squeeze the most out of your time together. It was a wonderful six months and she is the
first person to really bring you out of your shell. She was a neo-hippie, slender with long,
blond braided hair and long, flowing skirts with a small, studio apartment that
smelled like patchouli incense and red wine with Lisa Loeb and Juliana Hatfield
CDs playing constantly.
Two weeks before she is set to leave, she
proposes marriage to you. You are rocked
to your toes with the offer. It means
packing up and moving away again, this time out east. Her father owns a plumbing and heating
business and she said he’d be willing to apprentice you in the business so
you’d have steady work. You told her
you’d think about it. But you knew (and
probably she knew too) the answer was no.
Kim was a sweet, sweet woman, but you didn’t want to leave your friends
again, and you definitely didn’t want to get married. You told her and she was sad about it, but
she understood. Our last weekend
together you two dropped LSD, barhopped across the city to all of your
favourite spots and made love all night, fell asleep in each other’s arms, woke
up, made love again, took long walks, made love again before she left. This will probably go down as maybe one of
the best times (besides the birth of your children) in your life and you’ll
always smile when you think about it.
You tried keeping in touch after she moved away. The last you heard from her was a couple of
years later, when she invited you to her wedding. You replied, congratulating her and told her
you’d try to make it down. You never do,
and you two never talk again.
18:
Wow. Anyone else?
36:
There was one more that could’ve been, but wasn’t. She liked you and you liked her (you really, really liked her), but you were a
little… self-destructive at the time, and she didn’t want any part of that
scene. You were a little bitter about
that for a while. You’re good friends
now, but no more romantic interest from either of you. If you were a little less… intense in your
early 20s, she was definitely marriage material. Don’t dwell on it too much.
18:
What are the kids like?
36:
Your kids are awesome. I know,
we’re dad and we’re supposed to say that, but privately, between you and me,
they are awesome. Nick is 7, the older of the two boys. He looks and acts so much like us when we
were his age. Unfortunately he suffers
from anxiety the way we do as well.
Sometimes he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and he
strains to keep it all together. Both me
and his mom keep a close eye on him and remind him that he doesn’t need to take
on so much. He sucks up the environment
of what’s going on around him and responds accordingly. Sometimes when I get short with him he
withers the way I used to in front of dad, and I have to check myself. I absolutely do not drink any alcohol in front
of the boys.
He is a strange kid, but in a good kind of
way. He is a lot like Calvin from Calvin
and Hobbes and sometimes he does things that make absolutely no sense; it’s
infuriating and charming at the same time.
He spends a lot of time in a world of his own creation, just like Calvin
and just like us. We did it to cope with
dad’s drinking. He does it for his own
reasons. I suppose we still would have
done it had everything been fine. I
don’t know.
He feels the pull of loyalty between us and
his mom and her fiancée and we’ve told him that he doesn’t need to do this, but
he does anyway. He feels the need to
protect me. He asks why I live alone and
he constantly worries that I’m alone. I
tell him it’s okay, that friends come over all the time and I go out and I see
them at least 2-3 times a week, but he worries all the same. He feels partially responsible for the
breakup… he was a witness to the ex’s infidelity. He was brought over to the guy’s house and
played with his kids. He swims in guilt
over this even though it is not his fault.
This is something he’ll spend a lot of years struggling with I’m sure.
Gerry is a 2 year old glowing little bundle
of energy. He is similar to Nick in many
ways, and has a lot of Nick’s endearingly goofy traits, but is a lot more laid
back. Nick has always, since the day he
was born, a nervous kid. Gerry is
easy-going, but also strong-willed and does not cave in over anything. This is problematic when it comes to things
like bed-times and eating, but I’m actually a little relieved. Strong will is a good thing, with a little
control. He has the same incredible
capacity for imagination and charms the socks off of everybody who meets him.
18:
I never picture myself as a dad.
I mean, I’ve always imagined that I had kids, but I just never pictured
myself as dad, you know? Are we like Dad
at all?
36:
You’re very cognizant of behaving like Dad, so you have a fairly strict
‘no drinking’ rule around the kids. You
have Dad’s temper underneath the surface though, and you’re short with them and
raise your voice with them more than you’d like and for really inconsequential
things. You forget that they are kids
and sometimes you expect too much out of them.
Otherwise, parenthood is one of those things you thought you’d never be
able to do until you actually started doing it.
You’re a natural. You not only
love your kids, but kids in general.
18:
What do we do for a living? Did
we become a writer like we wanted?
36:
Unfortunately no… at least not yet.
You write a few stories for magazines and a few articles for the
university newspaper. You write a few
things for websites –
18:
Websites?
36:
You know, the internet?
18:
I’ve heard of it. *shrugs*
36:
Well, you’ll start writing on the internet in a few years. And a few people actually like what you
write. You’ll slip in and out of
interest as things in your life become more and less hectic. After you get married though, you virtually
stop writing. You do write about how
your marriage is plummeting toward disaster and you gain a small, but dedicated
following. And then you write a blog
about your life post-marriage.
18: A
blog? What the hell is a blog?
36:
Short for web log. A place on the
internet where people share their stories.
It’s really popular. There are
millions of them. It’s kind of like an
online diary.
18:
And people read this?
36:
As I said, a few do. But writing for
you now is more like an exercise in thinking out loud for an audience, rather
than actually writing for an audience.
And no, you don’t get paid for any of this. In fact, in the past 18 years, you make a
grand total of $255 dollars writing, not including promotional stuff – mostly
CDs, tickets to events, books, things like that.
18:
So what do we do for a living?
36:
We work at an office in the construction industry. We mostly do estimating.
18:
I so do not picture us doing that for a living.
36:
Surprisingly, even though it’s not necessarily a great paying job and it
isn’t what you wanted to do with your life, you enjoy it. You enjoy the people you work with and you’re
good at it. You are well respected by
your co-workers and your clientele. You
fit in there. You make it work.
18:
How did we end up doing that for a living?
36: Ok,
I told you in a couple of years that you’ll get a phone call from Dad. He apologizes to you –
18:
Fuck off!
36:
Seriously… he apologizes and asks you to come back home. The offer is mighty tempting. Money is constantly short and you’re living
paycheque to paycheque. You really need
to sort that out, by the way. Anyway, he
tells you that if you come home, he’ll put up some money for you to go to
university. You pay up your room until
the end of the month, pack up a couple of suitcases and head back to Winnipeg
18:
Let me guess… the money never materializes.
36:
He denies ever making that promise, and not too much has changed. He is still a drunk, still has violent mood
swings, although age and hard drinking has begun to wither him terribly. The inevitability of his own rapidly
approaching mortality has left him more morose and pathetic than anything else.
There was a little bit of a honeymoon when
you got back, but then when you mention school he goes ballistic and accuses
you of being a sponge and you should pay for your own school. You pack your bags again and move out,
rooming with friends. You take a job at one of those big box hardware stores to
make ends meet. And you basically work
your way up from being the maintenance guy cleaning toilets and unclogging
drains into sales and escaping the dead-ended surfdom of retail into where you
are now.
18:
So, what about school?
36: Mom, without Dad’s knowledge, co-signs a
student line of credit at the bank so your first year of university is paid
for. But after that, you’re on your
own. And you manage, until your third
year when you lose the job you had at the time and had a bitch of a time
getting another job that paid the bills.
Up until then though, those few years were probably the best years of
your life. You didn’t have a lot of
money, but you made tons of new friends, school was good, work, as crappy as it
was, was good in its own way and for the first time in your life, you are
actually popular. One of the most
popular guys around.
18:
What happened after third year?
36:
You take a year off to gather your wits about you, get back on your feet
and finish up. You’re in bad shape. You wind up homeless for a period of
time. Eventually, mom and dad find out
you’re living rough and offer you a place to stay, which eventually you say yes
to, even though you don’t want to.
Things get so bad for us, you attempt suicide, which ends up being kind
of a turning point for you, albeit a slow one.
As for school, you never do finish.
You go back part-time for a semester, but that’ll be that.
18:
Things got so bad we tried to kill ourselves?
36:
Cold, fatigue, hunger, loneliness and depression wear you down. It grinds you down more than you could ever
believe. Believe it or not, you and mom
and dad come to a truce. You get better
under their roof. You grow stronger and
more confident. You take a job and start
saving money. You get your groove
back. You reconnect with old friends and
make a slew of new ones. But there’s a
difference in you that’s never been present before. There’s a new confidence in you, an
indefinable sense that you are in control of your own destiny. You can’t stop smiling. It lasts a while, though not forever.
18:
What happened?
36:
You start dating your future wife.
Part 2 to follow...
- PW
Part 2 to follow...
- PW
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