I haven’t written a blog in about two months. Because…well…

…in other words, I’ve been busy. I mean, excuse me, I meant to say I’m sorry.

Also, I have no flowers to give.

Just an odd complaint or two.

I hadn’t intended my time to be taken away from me quite the way it has been, theatre, deadlines, stress, moving…hell, we’re not even a quarter way through the semester.

Mm. Let me start there, actually.

I resigned my job this past summer because I was moving to NYC. I still intend to, but things didn’t quite pan out that way at the end of July, not the way I’d planned them. Mostly due to a promise of funding that then became not a promise.

Nor did it become a reality.

That was bad enough. Then came the fact that I’d resigned my job. Which meant no money. And that was worse than bad.

So, I crawled into bed with my old, trusted friend Depression and sort of stayed there awhile, determined to make a cuddler out of him.

Then, somewhere in the background, I remember the phone ringing and a voice asking me if I’d teach a class on campus; they were short instructors. I said Yes, as I needed the money.

Now, I’m teaching five classes. One online.

Plus, I’m in the middle of a play, a farce, which of course requires energy, which of course I’m low on, and well, suffice it to say,

I’ve got my life back…

And it feels good.

And NYC is still hanging on, though not with the original school I’d been accepted to…I’m back to the waiting game, for several more months.

And I’ve been published three times since April.

And I’m eating sushi tonight.

So, for the first time in my life, I’m about to quote Shakespeare, as a smoke screen to a personal sentiment. But, it’s really relevant. Because, so far, anyway, it’s true that “all’s well that ends well.”  

At least, in the reverse.

It just takes awhile to learn how to share yourself, with Yourself. I always thought it easier to just open my arms to all detritus and force myself to figure out how to hold onto all of it, all the time. It’s foolish to think I could do that when I have trouble carrying my laundry to the washing machine. Many’s the time I’ve started a load only to find, on my way back to the living room, that several socks and boxer briefs have jumped ship.

I was well into my 20s before U.L. told me I wouldn’t get electrocuted if I opened the washing machine, even during the spin cycle, and dumped the defectors in with the rest of the captives.

It’s a lesson I learn every weekend. Though, I’m still missing one half of my striped Paul Smith socks. Going on three weeks now.

You’re always told to share with others, anyway. I guess that’s what makes it hard when it comes to self-care.

It’s ingrained in us at an early age, too. A few Sundays ago, I was standing on Nana’s porch with A.K., now 6, and he desperately wanted a turn on the “big boy bike.” His brother, Wynn, 3, had commandeered it. This is, at the moment, the only bike without training wheels in our family.

I told him that the polite thing to do was to ask for a turn.

He did. Wynn told him No, and zipped off down the driveway.

A.K. turned to me and sighed, shaking his head, and said, “He’ll never make it in kindergarten.”

No, maybe he won’t. But, right then, selfish as he was being, he was fully aware of Who He Was. And that, I’m sure, as the baby in the family, he knew, deep down inside where Jesus lives, once he let go of that bicycle, he wouldn’t see it again.

I was probably wrong to smile. But, I did.

That Wynn…not even realizing that he’s already a step ahead of the rest of us.

I went in to Nana’s to fix my plate, and thought, Man, I gotta get a bike.

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• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• “We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”
• Once upon a time, I wet the bed.

And I don’t just mean having to look it up in a dictionary. Since, I come before the mandatory use of home computers.

I had a personal encounter with the word.

It’s surprising, though, what one’s personal history of fads says about oneself. For me, in retrospect, my string of passing fancies was equivalent to that annoying solid beep of an emergency broadcast—“ in the event of an actual emergency, contact information will be provided.”

That second part there, that never happened.

Some of my “interests” were rather unique to me and me alone. Aside from the veritable sexual deviant scream of my addiction to jelly bracelets, in third grade, and the cheerleader-look of a Scrunchie bunched up on the top of my hip, right or left, holding a wad of a paint-splattered or tie-died T-shirt, I also went through a phase of wearing bells knotted at the end of various widths of ribbon necklaces.

Just because, I guess…

God, the praying my family must have done behind my Bugle Boy button-up back.

It got worse, though.

I wanted charms for my bracelets; I rarely left any day of the school week during the early 90s without a tight-roll to my blue jeans; and I believed with my whole heart in color coordinating my swatch watch with my slouch socks or, on fun days, with any of my enviable collection of Hypercolor shirts.

My fads were cries for help. Loud, in-your-face, gossip-creating cries. I see that now.

Granted, I never did fall for the love-you-and-leave-you lure of a fanny pack, but really, is that any consolation, considering the above-mentioned atrocities?

I suppose, looking back, one could argue that I was merely trying to bridge the brokenness in the wake of having no parental influence from either of the two people who, having come together after some football game, “worked together” in giving me life.

I think I was just secretly a greedy child. I liked attention.

Even if it came at the expense of name calling, as it did that confusing afternoon in which a young boy said something along the lines of “You’re a blah blah blah, and a something else yadda, yadda, yadda, fad.” Or, so, that’s what I thought he was referencing.

It turns out that it wasn’t.

What’s the point, here, you ask?

Last night, while channel surfing, I came across a National Geographic special on intersexed children. It’s much more of a biological occurrence than you might at first think.

I found it both difficult to watch and too engaging not to.

I think I found this to be the case because it’s such a grossly misunderstood occurrence, and not just for intersexed children—for any that are different, be it from Nature or Nurture. My heart bleeds a lot for the infirm, unfortunate, and overlooked. It doesn’t take much to get me “on your side.”

Keeping me there, though, usually involves a free meal, and/or a bottle of Marco Negri.

What disturbed me the most, though, and thus has led me to this discussion of fads, was the story I saw last night of a young seven-year-old boy who told his parents that he was supposed to be a “girl.”

Instead of arguing with him, they said, Fine, OK, you’re a girl. And, living in Japan—they’re an American  military family, no less—they have allowed their son to become their daughter. The child is happy, thoughtful, mannered, and despite the unbearable amount of verbal abuse this child has put himself through at school, seemingly well-rounded.

Perhaps that last comment has you perplexed.

I speak, though, from a place that knows. Because for many, many years of my life my whole purpose of being, my every prayer, was predicated on the off-chance I might go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning, a girl. It reached such a pinnacle of anxiety and self-hatred that two things emerged: a very, very uncomfortable confrontation involving U.L., Salathiel, the late Uncle Jerry, a young Hispanic man named Gabriel, and Uncle Jerry’s unsuspecting next-door neighbors in Pocatello, Idaho; and, an admission to myself of a real truth: I was unhappy in my own skin…and felt very alone.

I used to also pray at night for cancer, instead, because at least that could be removed. Or treated.

Nothing floats with quite the same consistency as truth. It, more than almost anything else in the world, will always rise to the surface, and when it does, it’s about as heavy as a paper plate.

The internal struggle of identity is beyond description, whether it involves the pressure to play sports when you’d rather read, or the precarious balance of being a boy when you really, truly think you’re not one.

I imagine puberty will be a living nightmare for this child.

And I know that psychiatry would argue against such parental white-flagging to what may appear as the misled whim of an adolescent. But, deeper still, is the fact that I believe we’re drawn, as early an age as two or three, perhaps, to the things that shape us. No matter what we do to hide them, pretend they’re Nothings, overlook them as valid, they are there as signposts, warnings, or words of encouragement.

How much easier it would be for all children, who struggle with identity and social placement, if we (as the proverbial outsiders, since it “always happens to someone else,” right?) just took that knowledge in stride. Fads are important barometers, but barometers aren’t meant to be alarming. They’re meant to gauge pressure.

I’m not saying fads force us into being the shape we appear to be born into. Rather, they let us know  what we’re capable of becoming; they’re indicators, decisions, options. And the only thing that has to pass…is the moment, if needed, or the awkwardness of realizing something’s not quite right, even when it doesn’t feel wrong.

Fads are an invitation to the party. They’re gifts of permission. Saying, OK, so you’re a boy who likes dolls. Well, go for it. Ride it out.  

And, though, it’s usually best done in the privacy of your own home; sometimes, you gotta go to Idaho.

I know this is just a theory, but it works…on me.  I just have to recall the things that I found myself most drawn to throughout my childhood to see that the picture I’ve painted for myself was an extremely colorful one, albeit with some really heavy lines and a little too Olan Mills.

It was a piece of art, all the same.

Fads are totems of Identity, our growth as a person.

For my cousin Mikey, in fifth grade, it was a bolo tie or bust.  While I snuck a cameo out of Tigi’s jewelry case and wore it over my breast pocket.  He had the entire Ewok Village; I had an Easy Bake. He collected Garbage Pail Kids cards; I framed the adoption papers of my two Cabbage Patch Kids. He preferred Aerosmith and Poison; I bought every single Amy Grant ever released, as a crossover pop-artist, as well as the one-hit wonder and brief tastemaker that was Karen White. He played in the mud and looked for worms to go fishing. I made mud pies and served them to the ants.

And my family, they had to know. One Christmas, Aunt Ruth gave him an envelope with money in it. To me, she gave a doll that she’d crocheted.

I guess they just assumed it was a phase.

As if.

But, now, it’s not like I didn’t do boy-things. I did. I loved to go fishing; I grew my own vegetables (still do), and on more than once occasion, I’ve aimed and shot a BB gun.

It’s just that as I got older, I was more inclined to buy acid-wash jeans that had BB bullets sewn down the leg in a swoop design. Remember those? That didn’t last for long.

I was an unavoidable totem, too tall and obvious, until the windbreaker made its debut. And everyone had one.

Thank god for the windbreaker, though.

Otherwise, I’d never know how much I didn’t want to fit in.

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It’s the oddest thing: no double doors are both unlocked, at the same time. Only one side is. Ever.  And you never know which side because it’s never the same side.

This causes no end of embarrassment, as you can imagine. Especially for me, a new faculty member. Call me crazy but it really is a blow to your credibility when you can’t even open a door properly.

And they'll turn on you quicker than a cottonmouth.

It’s happened to me twice already today.

This morning as I went to deliver the receipts from my conference trip, I turned back to tell the secretary, “Have a good day!”, and then immediately ran into the door – full face, glasses fell to the floor, skin imprint left greasily along the glass pane, the Works. It seems that today’s choice was the Right Side. Last week, the Left Side had been unlocked – the whole week long.

But not so, today.

Then, leaving the cafeteria, with my Guest Speaker, I, politely, tried to open the door for them, first, and nearly broke my wrist as it unyieldingly remained locked. (As we left, we encountered a confrontation between a student and a security guard. The student was being reprimanded for his use of foul language. Ah, good, old Mississippi community colleges…or, maybe just this one).

I touched no more doors after this, though. I couldn’t take any more humiliation.

Instead, I just stood around and waited for someone else to come through. That way there would be no mystery, and consequently, no accident.

This is, wouldn’t you agree, a rather unnecessarily frustrating experience; I mean, if you see a door, or doors, you naturally assume that either will open for you. When one doesn’t and you ram your forehead into it, it’s demoralizing.

And really, one time doing that is enough. Every time I approach a door, I shouldn’t have to wonder Who’ll Win? Never once should it cross my mind, OK, Kris, here comes a door. Take a deep breath and realize that you may fail. You may not be able to figure this out, but we’ll get through it.

I wonder who’s idea it was to instill a policy founded on the principles of the Guessing Game. I mean, are we so lazy we can’t afford the effort to unlock all doors constructed for public use? Just in case…? Or at the least, unlock the same side, each time?

Leaving an outline of my oily skin on the front doors to the Administration Building wasn’t my choice, and it certainly wasn’t the fitting reception I had hoped to receive, having been gone for the past few days.  But, it’s what I got.

Oh, and get this, even worse, I think only the janitor (God love her heart to death and all the way up Jacob’s Ladder) was aware that I’d been gone at all.

Sigh.

I really am at an impasse: loving what I do but not where I do it. Not even a little bit.

And I’d been so inspired, too, at this conference, despite the fact that the bathrooms, which were located on the basement floor, had what was quite possibly the most offensive odor I’ve ever had the great, massive misfortune to inhale.

You just can't trust grits, these days.

I’m not sure if it was a dead animal or just cheese grits, but it was something that I hope to never smell again. (I discovered a can of Lysol, under the cabinet, and I made sure to use the entire can in that bathroom because I was going to be at this conference for two days; one of us had to go, me or that smell. Let me assure you: there was not enough Lysol, and, in fact, I am the one who left).

But, aside from that, I fell in love with Hattiesburg, again. Like, an ounce of me did, at least. It’s gotten so big and fat.  And busy. I like that in a city.

Now, I’m back in my office, depressing myself. Literally and figuratively:

I’m having a mood swing (and the chains are loose, so watch out).

I’m also trying very hard to press my body into the smallest possible shape against the hard edge of faux wood that is my actual desktop.

Maybe no one will see me, I think.

I mean, it’s a wide impasse. I meant to tell you that, a moment ago, did I tell you that? I’m afraid I really don’t want to be here, but I have no one to blame except the Economy.

Also, the blood is cutting off in my hands because I’m leaning so hard against the desk, typing. And even though sometimes that’s a wonderful feeling, in truth, it isn’t really a wonderful feeling at all. Though I do wish I could make the rest of me go to sleep that fast.

Anyway, long story short(er): I’m happy to be back. Blogging, I mean.

And not to upset the delicate balance between what this would read like if I’d let Amanda edit it, and what it’s about to look like underneath my random typing fingers, I’d like to close with a few things I overheard yesterday while searching for clean underwear at the Turtle Creek Mall.

• I hate that. I have never liked pink. Never!
• He wasn’t gay yesterday.
• I can’t for the life of me find the Chuck E. Cheese’s.
• It’s not for me, man, it’s for my mom.
• That’s the stupidest place to put a Foot Locker.
• The people at Buckle still scare me. Do they you.
• Are you crazy? She’s too small! The ropes will kill her.
• He said the Chuck E. Cheese’s was down at the other end, by Dillard’s.
• I took her to IHOP because I don’t like her.
• I don’t know, I just think, that’s, like, one chain too many.
• What’s a Dippin Dot, Mama? I want a Dippin’ Dot, Mama. Can I have a Dippin Dot? Mama? Mama! Can I have a Dippin Dot?

And the piece de resistance:

• Well, I guess you heard him wrong, then. The lady at Kirkland’s said the Chuck E. Cheese’s is in front of Sears.
  

  This is a mullet. I fail to see the inspiration.

I passed by this particular Chuck E. Cheese family three times. The Mother had a mullet, and so did the Father; the Grandmother was a Pentecostal, and the three tow-headed children, one of which was asleep in a stroller, were sharing what appeared to be parts of the same outfit (i.e., one girl had the shirt, the other girl had the pants, etc).

I only hope they were able to find the restaurant. I think they needed it.

I was in and out, quick like that, myself. I haven’t been in much of a People Mood the past few days, and coming back to work hasn’t helped that mood much, but I will say two last things: 1) I got some great underwear, no lie, like I may marry them, and,

2) Hattiesburg has, at least, one thing going for it, in its favor. All the doors were unlocked…

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I know because I’m very attuned to these things. Like any hypochondriac.

Won't someone help this pretend man?

It’s crack (machines). I speak from experience. (And I’m pretty sure it’s not an epidemic of One, but if it is, that’s ok, because the army is an Army of One, and I know for a fact that there’s more than one person in the army.  I’m stepping forward to speak today because I’m no longer afraid to confess that I’m addicted. Perhaps, I can speak as One for us All. Perhaps, my story will help others).

I could hardly write that last sentence without giggling…at least, a little.

Ahem, anyway.

It’s one thing to enjoy a “devil” beverage at a bar, much to U.L.’s chagrin, but it’s entirely another when you’re enjoying it plus sliding countless dollars into a medium-sized black box with lights flashing and a menu of over 100 different touch-screen challenges, ranging from puzzles to quizzes to action and strategy. 

There’s even a Triple Threat option for those who like to live on the edge.

With my hypochondria, though, I take too much medication to attempt the Triple Threat. I’m nervous just sitting here thinking about it.

Here’s how you recognize that you have a problem: You’re going out to bars, on a regular basis BUT you’re not drinking at all, which bartenders don’t like. You’re simply going to play the games. On top of that, you’re accosting innocent people at bars like that time I did at Dave’s because I thought the machines were broken, which, of course, I knew immediately meant that they were phasing them out, getting rid of them, possibly because of their addictive natures, or to discourage me from coming out to Dave’s in the first place.

(Hypochondria can be mental, as well).

It turns out they’d just turned them off. It’s good to be energy-conscious. That’s what they reminded me of, again, last night.

Last night where I bet I spent ten dollars on one single machine because I am a competitive individual, I can’t help it.

I wanted to see those words Winner! or New Grand Champion! roll across the screen because I knew right after it rolled across the screen would come my favorite part: I’d get to type in my name and stand back as it clicked in at the Number One spot.

Some have said to me, Well, Kris, I’m certainly glad you don’t gamble.

Ha. Please.

That’s not even remotely the same thing. And let me tell you why.

Gambling doesn’t have a Top Ten list, for one thing, and second – you wouldn’t know those people anyway, probably. But at a local watering hole, like Dave’s and OVP, or Barrister’s, chances are you know the people on the Top Ten list, and you know them well. And so, you have to beat them because you know them.

See how flashy and red it is...

You want them, more than life and breath itself, to stroll back into that bar one evening, grab a Coors Light or a Cape Cod, or Vodka Collins, whatever, and sit down at that machine and try their hand at Gone Fishin’, or Double Quiz, or Type-A-Phrase, all the while thinking they’re going to beat their own score (they naively consider themselves still in the Number One position, naturally) and when all is said and done: Oh, they beat their own score, all right, but not mine.

Then, they have that moment where their fists ball up and they murmur a soft curse, That Kris! And order another Seven & 7.

That’s why I play. Imagining the look on their faces when they fall to second place is the whole of my addiction.

And that’s, also, the hole in my wallet.

But, I mean, doesn’t money exist to be spent? Where else would I put it? The bank?

Please. I’m one of the last members of Generation X. We don’t “do” banks. Our entire reason for existing was to aggravate everyone else. Especially parents. And parents “do” banks, so, there goes that.

I admit it – we’re probably the reason for this current recession.

Of course, now that I’m in my 30s, I’m ok with a bank. I’m wishing now that I’d “done” banks, back then. Because my car needs a tune-up, two new back tires, there’s electricity – I like having it – so I’ll have to pay for it. Yes, just when I least expected it, Life came running back downhill and kicked me in the face for being a “rebel.”

God, I’m using a lot of quotation marks, today.

Probably because I recognize the futility of a youth mostly wasted. Not all, but mostly. And if it took me this long to figure that out, then I worry for my nieces and nephews. They’re already belligerent. And the oldest isn’t even 5, yet. Still, they’ve established a pecking order: who sits where at Sunday dinner, who gets the yellow truck, who gets the green and blue books, etc. So young, and yet, they “must have” certain things, if for no other reason than to keep someone else from getting it.

Is that what propels us to addictions, in the first place? A lack of control over anything larger than the Self? An inability to see beyond the temporal? I wonder…

Sure, you might argue that an addiction is the opposite of self-control, but is it? Really?  The more I think about it, the more I come to believe it isn’t, actually. It’s an abusive, unhealthy form of self-control, but all the same, it’s self-control…it becomes a luxury in its destructiveness, a habit that we eventually must enforce.

I suffered from an eating disorder for several years. Originally, it was harmless enough. I’d had a car accident, I’d hurt my left leg (nerve damage), and I wasn’t able to play tennis, officially, so I did what most do under the circumstances: I became depressed. (And I didn’t need much help in that department).

At first, it was easy enough to not eat. I wasn’t in the mood for it.

Some things just seem fat.

But, then, I actually began to enjoy the looming end result of not eating. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do (tennis, etc.), but rather than focus on that, I could do something else: re-make my body image. Denying food became a game…with no clear way to define a winner. I lost an ungodly amount of weight. My family eventually intervened, of course. But, it wasn’t an easy intervention, upfront.

However, when, I fell out in church, that was that.

We knew something was wrong then. Baptists don’t get the Holy Ghost. If you fall out in church, it’s most likely from a medical reason. Also, one time, Miss Ada Lee may have had a heart attack in church. Point is, we knew why people fell in church and it wasn’t because they found God. Per se.

My weight was sickeningly low. I was 22, 5’10″, and maybe 118? U.L. has burned all the pictures from that painful time, and painful it was, but I must tell the truth: I “felt” entirely in control of myself, my life. When I put on a pair of blue jeans that I’d not worn since the fifth grade, I was elated. Not for the sake of weight loss, anymore, but for the idea that I could fit in these pants, and the last time I’d worn them, I was a child…and that meant, I was someone else’s responsibility. That was the safety I think I was trying to secure by not eating.

I think that’s what addictions do for us.

They cover us, they shield us, they protect us, bad as they are. They distract us when we need it…the problem is they also distract us when we want it. The danger comes in marring the line that differentiates the two: want vs. need.

I know, I’ve kept my toe on that line for many a year.

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I admit it: There’s something beautiful in a martini glass; something so achingly elegant in the way a champagne flute plays its score.  And I know it must be in my blood because I wasn’t brought up to drink, it was never glorified, and certainly not encouraged, not in a Baptist household.  (At least the Jews in my family drank wine, but I didn’t know them very well, and they always seemed to be committing suicide or losing a few children in Oklahoma or some such dramatic thing as that which didn’t lend itself very well to summer visits). No, at Uncle Larry’s house there was no alcohol, of any kind, ever, except that one time Aunt Ruby came to visit from Memphis and left some peppermint brandy, for her nerves she said, in the cabinet over the stove.

Oh, but there were stories about alcohol.

Grandfathers forever sneaking off, in the middle of the night which seems to be between 10:00 PM and 11:00, and involved Bingo Halls, I’m thinking, and running cars into ditches…almost making the driveway, definitely making the Yaupon and Boxwood. Mothers ruining church cantatas by showing up late, and wearing running shorts and sun hats under which her pills were kept, dangling on the arms of men with names like Churl and Bud. And fathers. There were fathers in there somewhere, I don’t know how I know it but I do.

And there were sons, too. Sons who drank despite, to spite, the parable(s).

I’ve never been to a meeting, never had counseling, like two of my brothers; they told me their experiences and I adopted them as mine.  Never had the privilege of rehab, like the other two, though it was appealing on some level to have known people, and smart people too, who went to rehab. I’ve certainly stood in the family pulpit and made pronouncements on them all about their vices, but unlike the rest of my siblings, I seem to be the one who inherited the Key to Managaeability, often disguised as moderation.  A good alcoholic can hide right out in public, cloaked in gin or vodka, if he stands very still and smiles as if he’s got a secret confidence. The right amount of teeth shown can convince anyone.

I was…still, am, at times…that kind of alcoholic, and I’m using that term because that’s the point of this blog.  I was always fun, always funny, Wildean wit, a Williams flare for the quip, when drinking.  It made me sharper, and I think there’s a research study in there somewhere. I think it’s absolutely true that liquor does this for some of us. And I didn’t want that to stop; I’m a writer, I needed it, I needed my brain to click over so I could save myself from the Thousand Thoughts.

Unless I’ve been drinking whiskey, Bourbon, any of that family, though, that wasn’t pleasant.  My blood can’t take it. My mouth can, but the man I turn into after a few tumblers is not a nice man. So, what do you do? 

You just stop drinking whiskey, is what I said, and did. Or… 

…or you do it when no one’s watching.  Except Aristophanes. She’s very open-minded and nonjudgmental; she’s also part bobcat. And still, I didn’t have her declawed. I didn’t agree with that.

I had a dear friend who used to hide bottles around the house, mostly vodka, that was her crutch. I never did that. We weren’t hiders, no. We drank right out in front of each other; on my father’s side, we did. If you were going to stare at us, you were going to get the whole picture. It made a life more honest, and also, a lot damn harder to love through. My mother’s side drank too, at least the women did. But not Uncle Larry and not Nana. They had a different size of shoulder. 

I get so tickled at people, though, who believe that so long as they make the admission, any admission, that they can use honesty as a defense. That’s not how honesty works at all. The point of honesty is to keep the bridge afloat, not charge a toll. And, for me, I guess that’s what made drinking so glamorous; I could just ignore the toll with a glass in my hand.  Hell, I could ignore the whole bridge. I would just drink myself into Who Cares Anyway, and laugh at some personal joke instead, happy as a potato, right in front of the bridge and devise some other method of Getting Over the Creek. One that usually involved driving.

I never drank out of rebellion. I didn’t drink because I wasn’t supposed to. I drank because it was within reach. It was as easy to grab as the fork, or napkin. (But not the bill…ugh, the bills).

To show the whole total would just be too gauche.

I didn’t start drinking until I was 21, living in Orlando, working at Disney on the College Program. No one pressured me into it, no one did anything, and so the mystique became the idea of its privacy. I wanted a secret as much as anyone else did. I had no idea, honestly, that it’d make so much sense to me to drink. I couldn’t possibly be the Total Sum of a Family Tree; I couldn’t be That Root, not when I didn’t grow up with them, or know them, not when I was transplanted at the age of three to a smaller Eden, born away to a great uncle’s house in Mississippi. Not a thousand miles from Home in Orlando.

But, I was.

It wasn’t until My Indiana Years that I fully slipped. I’d used alcohol as a coping mechanism before, yes, but Indiana was the tipping point. I worked solely to drink, to escape the relationship I didn’t really want but took and kept because it got me out of Mississippi. It was easy to drink, and the bloat that seeped into my face and stomach and chin told the story a lot better than I’m doing now. It was a gross story. And, I’m sure, in time, there will be people to thank for the actions they took. But, that’s not now. And, so you know, there’s a good chance that that Time is kept on a watch I gave away accidentally last Christmas.

Time heals all wounds, dries all alcoholics sober, but nothing comes with conditions quite like Time.

I used to say, in jest, that I had to drink until I was drunk enough to drive. Why God saved me from those nights, I don’t know.  They were long and shameful nights, the next morning, but never during, and that’s where the intoxication comes from. The things I’ve said, and done, while drunk, are best left unmentioned for two reasons: 1) those stories belong to other people, now, and 2) I can’t really remember them anyway. I hated realizing I’d had a blackout, but god, I longed for them because I was a terribly, privately depressed young man. And if alcohol was a disease, then the blackout was your treatment. To be given the right, or to take it, to forget because of a blackout…that was a blessing.

It wasn’t until last summer that I decided to cash in on this old world and trade it in; I didn’t get that much for it. But, at the same time, I don’t blame anyone for my drinking.

I do blame a select few for making a bar a better bed than my real one.  

Still, I don’t drink some liquors at all anymore; I limit my nights out, a social experiment, I suppose, which is appreciated most of all by my wallet, but have I stopped drinking? No.

A fish can’t change his fins. But he sure as hell can keep them to himself and not muddy up the riverbed.

And to be honest, as I still struggle with this everyday, and this being as close to a microphone about it as I’ll ever get, I’m more than a little frightened. I didn’t realize that twelve years had already passed, until this morning, twelve years.  I’ve been an alcoholic longer than any job I’ve ever held, or all my years of college and graduate school combined. If only I could find a creative way to put that on my resume to prove that there are some things to which I’ve been faithfully and gainfully employed. If only there were some way to highlight that commitment.

The last interview I went on, they took me to dinner…and drinks. (Sigh).

Over a third of my life has been spent with alcohol, and what scares me is that I won’t like who I am without it. But, that’s what I’m doing, that’s what I’m trying, and if nothing else, my trade in gave me enough money, at least, to pay the toll.

So, I’m gonna pay it, for the very first time (again) and see what happens.

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But you know what: you can.

I do it every Sunday. Mainly because I don’t want to miss Nana’s cooking; it’s in a class of its own…and I love going home, I do, but you want to know a secret:  It’s also quite often very aggravating.

Why is that?  Why is going home such a frustrating experience?

I've lost my keys...and the doorknob.

Sometimes, I think, it’s because as soon as I open that front door and step inside, I’ll see that nothing has changed, and I’ll feel like I haven’t changed either. And I hate that feeling.

Despite the unusuality (I’m creating this new word right this second; I think I am, anyway) of my family circumstances, I had a fairly conventional upbringing: a solid home life, food each evening, love, and church. But, I was reared by a great uncle, in Mississippi, and so…like many families in the Deep South, change was avoided, and at our most hospitable, conveniently forgotten when wedding invitations went out, or when pressed, allowed to sit at the table but thoroughly ingnored and not given a linen napkin or salad fork.

The couch had been the family couch since before I was born; the curtains had cost a fortune when purchased, pre-Depression, and so they were tolerated with their heaviness and coatings of dust and memory. The chairs at the dining room table had been in the family since before there was a family, they weren’t going anywhere…so much had been sacrificed for the minutiae and detritus, if you will, that we lived in, and splendidly, and all those little things that went into making the home a home…well, it’s understandable that it became a necessary security to make the home remain that way – unchanged.

It wasn’t a coffee table; it was a story. It wasn’t a piano; it was religion. And it wasn’t china, it was our history. We were curators as much as members of a family, and you don’t become a curator in a day. And a curator has great responsibility.  (They’re not exactly a docent, for godsake).

To ignore that is a wide sin.

I’ve thought on this for quite awhile, as a means to calm myself from frustration.  It’s not so much the expected conversations: you need insurance, check your tires, stop putting things on the credit card; any child, I think, would feel unloved without these petty nitpickings.

No, what it is, at least for me, is the lack of understanding about major things…at least the reciprocation of it.

But, I think I realize now why. 

I look around the house and see things that I didn’t have to work for; things I expected to always be there: plates, sweet tea, arm chairs. My uncle looks around and sees things he’s given a life up to get, to take care of me when no one else would. He lives in a house of prior burden, and in it, he’s carried everything over and worked hard to deserve it, to keep deserving it. For me to turn a nose up at that is an insult, of course. He’s living in his major things. So, the reciprocation is difficult to measure. And, truth be told, all I really want, is a house like his…of my own.

But, here’s what the makes Deep South, deep:  guilt.

We don’t grow up to move away, we’re not supposed to…even within the state, it seems, sometimes. We are “grown up” to be representatives of our people, our church community, our neighbors; it’s one reason we make great politicians, those of who do get away.

Down here, everyone has a vested interest, I guess, which is a great support but not the most Platonic of ideals. It takes a village, Hillary Clinton has remarked, and yes it does, but this village has a drawbridge.

They are scared because they can’t imagine another village, or why in the world, after all they’ve done for you, you’d want to go there, and stay, and trust me: no suitcase in the world is big enough to pack that kind of guilt.

There’s also no way to explain this need, which many of my generation have, on a routine, clockwork Sunday afternoon…and so what happens is you begin to talk about anything else under the ecclesiastical sun to steer the bulk of conversation away from ”where you’re going” and you just talk about “where you’ve been, and what that was like.” You avoid the future, because it must involve the unknown and the unknown is built on change, and that avoidance takes so much energy that you leave home each weekend exhausted…and a weekend spent in exhaustion is aggravating. And you know, next Sunday is not that far away. 

You keep squirreling away your privacy and plans and realize that the only way this will work is to jump ahead, make the move, then a U-Turn, then an announcement on your way out of town, and then you put your seatbelt on and drive and drive and drive until you realize you hadn’t packed anything, and that’s ok, because nothing is still better than guilt. Shock is the only salvation we still possess.

 Yet, we keep going home, don’t we? Either to prove Wolfe wrong, or dig a deeper hole in the front yard. Ironically, you can’t dig a deep hole anywhere hear a magnolia.  The roots are too hungry.

I guess the biggest frustration, really, in going home again, is that of expectation.  Because buried beneath the heart in all of us is a fear of meeting that expectation: I’m sure parents, even great uncles, know this – the dreaded what ifs – what if my child is that rare breed who can’t wait to be kicked from the nest?  I was that child. What if my child is the one who thinks he can make a difference? I was that child, too…still am. What if my child is a dreamer, a writer, an actor, a singer, a lover, a mover? What if, what if, what if.  I am, I’m all of them, and everyday I try to decide just which child I am, was, or want to be, still.

I love my uncle more than anything else in the world. But, I’m also not through with the world, yet. The other side of the problem is that I’m too ready to move. The timing’s not right, then. But, the need, the desire, the drive is.

Still, I stall on the idea of expectation.

I’m supposed to be working on one of my new plays, right now, for instance, and even though I argue with editors and friends and workshoppers on my slow progress(es) with anything I write, strung out over a strange array of “valid excuses,” the truth is I’m scared to death I won’t meet their expectations. Just like I keep straddling the fence on my next move, literal and meta, because I’m scared not of what I can’t see ahead of me, but of what I’ll see when I look back.

And for the record, I rarely use salt in my cooking; the last thing I need is a pillar of it.

So, for the time being, I keep going home.  Out of respect, which some in my life never understood, and to learn a little more before heading out again. There’s something, I suppose, that seems regressive about keeping a finger on old roots; but, for me, there’s something so necessarily alluring about the roughness of those old roots that I’m not sure I could remember if I let go of them just yet.

It’s what writers do. And that’s what I am.

At least, today.

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