Part Uno

Let’s you and I begin the begin, shall we?
Me

To assume the responsibility of writing the Great American Novel is not only an awesome responsibility, but also poses the distinct risk of disappointing more than a few people while dangerously flirting with the probability of demagoguery. Good thing I don’t care. Of course, a wee bit of single malt over ice combined with an MSG-infused meal of highly processed, over-cooked meat-stuff, seasoned with a sardonic sense of reality, a smattering of disconnected antipathy, and a sprinkling of sleep-deprivation all combine to help stack the odds in my favor even if I am lacking a plan, a plot, a list of characters and, of course, a book deal. But then again, he who plans early plans twice, and I don’t like to sweat the details. Let us then consider this a journey into one man’s depraved, slightly drunken mind and see where exactly it takes us. Who knows? Maybe we’ll enjoy the journey, or perhaps you’ll chuck it, toss the book and defer to the intrinsic brilliance and social commentary of Jerry Springer in stead.

Yet again, good thing I don’t care. I don’t write for you. While I’d very much like to assert that I don’t write this for you, I know in my heart that is simply not true. Why tell a story if you don’t want others to partake of it, to share some measure of the experiences you describe? Writers who maintain anything else are daffy egocents. Incidentally, I might be an egocent, but I assure you that I’m not daffy. No, truth be told, I’d like you to share some of your valued time with me. I’d like to tell you a story, my story, and while it isn’t always happy or easy, there’s a net sum in the positive column that I’ve arrived upon after no small amount of tumult. I’ve learned some stuff, while other aspects are still being processed by my brain housing group even today. Still, I’d like to share two things with you. The first is a rare soul who was named Beth. She wouldn’t want me to hold her to myself, and to that end I sincerely hope I’ve honored her appropriately by sharing her beauty with you. The second is a sequence or series of lessons that I have spent the past how-ever-long learning in her absence. I would be remiss, selfish and, yes, daffy if I didn’t offer that which I’ve become as a result of Things That Have Transpired. I write for me; that much is the honest truth. That you elect to partake in this torrid, sometimes nonsensical diatribe is something that I wonder about, yet I sincerely hope you’ll share this journey with me. As some have said, I might be as deep as the children’s end (maybe they’re right), yet I nonetheless think there’s something to be gained by sharing This with you, something that Beth no doubt approves of. Thank you, but enter at risk to your sensibilities or, at the very least, your time well spent.

So, where to begin? I suppose two of my good friends—both also writers intent on penning the Great American Novel—would have a well-scripted plan to lead you into an exquisitely developed plot line that, through an intricately woven tapestry of character development and heart-wrenching drama, would snatch your attention and convince you to follow them on their journeys to the fabled lands of intellectual enlightenment and empathetic awareness. Felcher and Toots (yes, those are actually names, not in the proper sense; but we’ll get to that in a bit) of course are of that nature, preternaturally anal retentive and meticulous planners who are, as I spew forth this dribble, no doubt plotting, scripting, drafting, designing and creating.

In a more formal sense, Maugham once suggested the perfect sequence and/or convergence of activities that were required of a good novel’s ending while, at the same time, offering the humble disclaimer that Larry would prove to be normal in appearance yet sublimely unique within the context of his time. I harbor no such delusional vision of literary grandeur. I offer not the sacred confluence to define my ending that Mr. Maugham suggested, nor do I even so much as dare to suggest that my main character will prove to be anything more than supremely normal. In that sense, then, I suppose that the only meager similarity I share with Mr. Maugham is that I too begin this story with trepidation and fear, but therein the similarity ends. Others plan, slave and skillfully craft their stories. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

Not me, no sir.

I prefer in stead to take a healthy swig from the glass and step forth into the abyss of my goofy mind. That and I am not a well-accessorized, well-coiffed, well-educated member of the literary intelligentsia. Most importantly, I just don’t care all that much. In the annals of American literature, there have been well nigh enough self-stylized masters of the art, so I presume nothing in that stead. I am a miscreant, plain and simple. So tag along if you’ve got the fortitude, inclination and nothing better to do.

And yet again, we come to the same stupid question. If I am to tell a story, where am I going to take you? Into my own sordid life I suppose. Call me asshole; just don’t call me Ishmael. I am, to eloquently summarize, plane white bread, the antithesis of everything that has flavor or colour. In a different world, I’d probably make the perfect CIA agent—so unassuming and nondescript that nobody would notice as I blended into the background, able to pilfer secrets and do the whiz bang spy shit with ease. Unfortunately, I take the nondescript thing to an entirely new order of magnitude to such extent that I am so plain that I stick out like a cowlick on a freshly woken head of bushy black hair. I am the annoying hangnail that’s too small to bite off but so annoyingly “there” that I drive you crazy. I am neither tall nor short, neither smart nor dumb, neither heavy nor light, neither ugly nor handsome. Six-foot-something, one hundred seventy five, neither skinny nor heavy, accomplishments and education of no particular distinction; I simply am, and it hurts. Were I to be a super hero of some sort, either DC or Marvel Universe, I would surely be imbued with the super power of being able to dazzle and stun people with my overwhelming mediocrity. Call me Wonder Bread Man, champion of all that is bland, tasteless and lacking nutritional value. Hooray for me.

What-the-fuck-ever.

I am technically of Central and Eastern European descent, third generation American. I am the only human offspring of two loving, attentive parents who are both still alive and quietly disappointed in me for never achieving my full potential, whatever the shit that is. They are, of course, far too decent to ever say words to that effect. Regardless, having reached my mid-thirties, I have attained a degree of comfortable detent with my professional life and my finances, living in relative comfort but never destined for wealth, fortune or fame. I make my car payments and I can buy new blue jeans whenever I wish, yet I am still slave to droll industry, mired in the mindless dribble that keeps me codependent on my unappreciative place of employment. It’s the paradox of modern life I suppose, save those few annoyingly blessed trust fund children and/or those depraved souls willing to take vows of poverty in quest of their art. I have no art, brother; I have a mortgage though.

Nope. No such luck for me since I am also Jewish, which is a religion that exists in a seemingly conflicted reality offering the casual observer both the Humorous and the Tragic at the same time. In fact, I often laugh whenever I hear or read the monosyllabic words some inbred white supremist talk of the Great Jewish Conspiracy. Never have I unearthed any such beast, for if it did exist I would at least use that power for evil in order to pilfer millions and ensconce myself into the pornography industry. Maybe then I’d actually get laid with somebody other than myself. But, no, I am not that fortuitously endowed (double entendre intended), and I am subject to the same monotonous existence that afflicts most of Western Society. I wake, I work, I eat, I sleep—and then I repeat the cycle day in, day out. Judaism provided little more than a sub cultural framework for deeply buried racial memories of guilt and neuroses, and little else. God was someone that I obtusely believed in out of obligation rather than passion, kept at arms length to satisfy the most basic requirements of my pre-selected formalized religious indoctrination courtesy of Sunday morning reeducation camps as a child and such. God was there, but not close, not until adulthood, that is. God is now close, very close, but only in the context of utter resentment and enmity.

Ahh…and so it begins, as the truth of my motivation seeps upwards. In the background, I hear the spine-chilling creak of a door opening, and I smell the putrid smoke seeping out from the chamber beyond. Not yet, sister, not yet. Let’s focus first on beginnings, simple and humble as they might be. Excitement and colour were visited on me briefly, but it’s not yet time to discuss them. I promise to share that with you as the alcohol hubris builds the ramparts and fortifies the bulwarks enough to fight-off the beast long enough to share the tale with you, just not quite yet.

Currently, I’m living my final days in this particular life in a modest bungalow in Ocean Beach, California. By “modest” I mean that it is roughly 900 square feet, built in the 1930s, badly in need of repair and worth about $450,000. I paid $200,000 for it when I moved here nearly ten years ago. It’s a nice place by SoCal standards, for me a refuge from the intrusions of the world where I can walk along Sunset Cliffs and watch the sun sink into the vast Pacific every night, and where I can open the windows and enjoy the fresh air blowing off the water every afternoon, shooing away the agony of days spent confined in a self-imposed prison of servitude to the system and, more compellingly, servitude to What Happened. It’s home and it was once very comfortable for me. It is roughly square in shape, non-descript in color and equipped with a small but well-appointed kitchen including a side-by-side refrigerator, a four burner gas cook top, a matching in-wall range, and a dishwasher, which is rare in these goofy old houses. I’ve got a single bedroom and one-and-a-half bathrooms. The house has a nice family room/dining room and, perhaps most importantly, it’s got the world’s smallest pool in a back yard equipped with two small but healthy and prolific lemon and orange trees. It is my own personal piece of the Southern California real estate delusion and my own personal provision for Pleasant Valley Sundays…at least it was.

Down the street, within strolling distance are two of my favorite things in the neighborhood, a great “mom and pop” coffee house who’s proprietor knows me by name (it helps that I go there almost every morning for a steaming cup of Jamaican Blue, Tanzanian Peaberry or Kona Gold), and a local Central American grocery that makes the best lobster burritos north of Ensanada. The cliffs? What else can I say…if you’ve never seen the coastline of California, either north or south (but not the LA basin), then you have no idea that nature and physics could have conspired to create such awe-inspiring magnificence. Sunset Cliffs, located half way down the windward side of Point Loma and providing natural shelter for San Diego Bay, is a gentle promontory that has heather and ice-plant covered steep meadows descending to rocky cliffs below. A favorite of local surfers, hikers and trail runners, the Cliffs are slowly succumbing to the relentless assault of the Pacific, retreating towards my house and many others. It’s a shame only in the sense that the view will be lost over time—the incursion of man and the impact of real estate capitalism not so much.

Up the hill from my bungalow are larger houses of the half million dollar plus variety with commanding views of the ocean and, on clear days, San Clemente and Santa Catalina Islands. Wind swept Torrey pines dot the lots and street corners. This place is as close to heaven as I could have imagined once. My wife loved it dearly, eschewing the purchase of a new, affordable home in one of the many, anonymous inland cookie cutter developments in order to keep living in this wondrous place. To her it was paradise, small house, small pool, green cliffs and all. I used to think the same.

So, it is here that I live my abnormally normal life. It is here where things changed as profoundly as they possibly could have; it is where I changed and became Something Else Entirely.

One of the amazing things that living in California offers, however, is that I can, as often as I choose, get on the highways and travel to an amazing variety of diverse geography. Believe me; that has proven to be a blessing of immense meaning. California is naturally therapeutic for me at least. It’s a sublime comment on the sheer magnificence of this state to stand on a warm beach in the spring and gaze on snow covered peaks in the background. Thus, I travel as much as my work and my finances allow, visiting several favorite locations including the wine country, the Eastern Sierra, Mammoth Lakes, Tahoe, Shasta, the Anza Borrego Desert and the Central Coast, always alone. Remove the LA basin, and you’d most likely have the most culturally complete, geographically diverse and aesthetically gratifying place on this continent. Those are mighty lofty words, I realize, but I defer to what I said earlier. I don’t care. I make those comments for myself.

Well…mostly for myself.

Truth be told, I also say them in large part for the belligerent benefit of the citizenry of the unequivocally dumbest, most self-absorbed state in the Union; Texas. Having grown up there, I can attest to the stupidity that permeates that godforsaken dust bowl of dirt, hills, swamps and dumb-ass belt buckles. Eat shit Texas…secede already. Ha.

Memories of that place begin somewhere in time, buried in the recesses of a childhood neuro network that provides glimpses of sight and sound and color far more than tangible, effective memory. The landscape of my backwards vision is pocked with the scars and craters of exploded landmines as far as Texas is concerned. Memories of pain and alienation blown apart on the field of my memories. But, as SGT Ross warned, where as most of the mines are inert, some remain decidedly ert. Texas in terms of attitude and culture, I will discuss at a later point. For now, what I remember is mostly flat and plowed. Dirt clods for miles on the southwest side of town that would eventually be encircled by loop upon loop of concentric super highways. At that time, however, it was little more than pasture land with sporadic developments of planned communities and ubiquitous strip centers. In between was land, and lots of it, some of it speckled with trees, some of it without, most of it with fields of cattle, and all of it utterly barren-flat. This much I remember of East Texas just north of the Gulf Coast. Harris County had nothing of aesthetic merit, and in an odd sense, I think it provided the colourless pallet upon which my psyche and image were crafted.

Nothingness begets nothingness.

California would have held the promise of surf and mountains and nature to a young boy who was painfully aware of his awkwardness within his own skin. Texas only made it worse.

Fuck.