An E-mail

I still haven't gone to bed after my last post, so I decided to be productive and catch up on e-mails. This is quite a task, as many people often seek my counsel, or just want to be kept up to date with the details of my insanely entertaining life. 


So when I sat down to write Carinne an e-mail, here's what I produced. I share it with you because it has some lessons that we could all learn from, and because it gives a brilliant insight into the man who penned it. 


I began the e-mail with a few simple, yet brilliant introductory paragraphs. 


Then, this followed:


"...


I'm not sure mine will be that eclectic [nice word choice, Ed], but it will be long. And you know what they always say: if you can't write an eclectic e-mail, at least write a long one. 

I saw your rock climbing pictures. Looked beautiful. The only thing that would have made it cooler is if you'd discovered a Civil War ironclad submarine full of gold during the hike. You probably won't remember, but that's the plot to Sahara - that movie you made me watch with you starring Matthew McConaughey. You of course, fell asleep during it, so I ended up turning it off because during the entire thirty minutes I watched it, I found no reason to keep it on. You should know, however, that I've decided that Matthew McConaughey is annoyingly good-looking, and so is Ryan Gosling. When you think about it, they're pretty selfish guys, actually. There are kids starving in Africa and they're spending that much time on themselves, trying to look good? They could be using their time to generate awareness, to raise money for those poor kids, but instead, they spend their days tanning and trimming their facial hair and getting photos taken of them looking pensively into a camera. Everybody needs to grow up, and it starts with them.  

Do you see what I just did there? I wrote six lines that really added nothing to the e-mail. They didn't really explain how I've been doing and they didn't really offer much of an opinion about what you've been up to [other than that the rock climbing looked beautiful, but you already knew that]. All I did was talk about two good-looking male celebrities, who should really have no bearing on this conversation whatsoever. But that, my dear, is how you write a long e-mail. And why do you need to write a long e-mail? you might ask. Well [besides the reason I gave you earlier: if you can't write an eclectic e-mail, at least write a long one], because when you send somebody a long e-mail, they assume you spent a long time writing it and therefore that you care about them -- after all, you sat down and dedicated a all this time just to share your words, your thoughts with them. What they don't realize is that often the shortest e-mails are the most heartfelt, because you sat at the computer and couldn't find anything to say except the core of your heart, so you just shared a few lines, which are the only ones really worth reading anyways. But if you couldn't already tell, you're getting the long version this time. 

And did you see what I just did there? That's close to eight lines, explaining how I added six lines. Pure genius I tell you. Pure genius. 

So you're still in Thailand, huh? Do they speak Engrish over there? Does everybody look like Confucius? 

But back to you. Rock climbing doesn't sound that fun, to be honest. People have always told me I'd love things like scuba diving and rock climbing, but activities that bring you face-to-face with the terror of death don't appeal to me that much. And after seeing 127 Hours, I decided that I'm never rock-climbing. Is it logical to rule out an activity because of an extreme case I saw in a movie once? Absolutely not. But my life has been fine so far without any extensive rock climbing and scuba diving, and I think it'll be just fine without it. I of course plan on walking trails and backpacking up hills and many other outdoorsy things before I die, but rock-climbing and scuba diving, I'll pass. Because the only times you really ever hear about rock-climbing and scuba diving is when someone dies, and I feel like I hear those stories often enough to make me believe that pretty much everybody who partakes in them dies at some point or another. 

Now sky-diving, that's a different matter. I want to do it, but only if I could jump by myself, which of course you can't do on your first jump, so I'm actually probably never going to sky dive, though I desperately want to. First of all, the thought of a guy strapped behind me as we fall through the air is just gay. If there was a woman instructor, this would help, but I don't think women are allowed to be sky-diving instructors/guides, or whatever you call people who jump out of airplanes strapped to other people [besides morons]. And secondly, having someone else pull the cord/tell you when to pull the cord -- that takes the fun out of it. That would be like someone giving you a sweet car, but then every single time you drove, there was a driving instructor in the front seat who told you when to put on your indicator, when to brake, when to accelerate. I'd sign a waiver. I'd do whatever was needed to ensure that when I leapt out of the plane it was just me, some sweet skydiving outfit, and a parachute. [And a watch. I think those skydiving instructors/guides always wear big watches... And goggles. They always have dumb looking goggles, but I'd wear those too, just to look the part.] Because then if I landed, I'd have actually accomplished something. It would be me that had survived. I pulled the cord, I steered my way to safety. I would have cheated death. Not some expert who does it every day. At some point, people need to take the training wheels off their life and start jumping out of planes by themselves. 

There once was a girl named Carinne,

Who lived a life full of sin. 

She wore flannel outfits,

never shaved her armpits,

And ate cockroaches by the bin. 

Bet you weren't expecting a personalized limerick, were you? But you got one. 

This seems as good a time as any to lecture you about expectations, Carinne. You see, being two years older than you, I feel reasonably qualified to inform you about life. I know what lies ahead, and you -- so young, so naive -- you have no idea. How could you? You're like a worker bee, who's out for honey one day and stumbles upon a beautiful flower. I'm a more experienced worker bee -- the queen trusts me more -- and I look at the flower along with you, and then we both smile, and then I look at you and tell you about expectations. Anyways, you shouldn't expect things, Carinne. Notice how I put that in italics. Actually, I didn't put "that" in italics. I put "expect" in italics. I wrote: expect. Notice how the italics further emphasize what I'm trying to say. Italics are important, Carinne. Far too many people don't say what they mean. They don't put enough weight in their words. Notice how heavy the word "weight" feels when it's italicized. 


Take these two sentences for instance: 

Carinne loved jellybeans. 

Carinne loved jellybeans. 

The first Carinne, well, she loves jellybeans, and that's good and dandy, but the second Carinne, man, she loves jellybeans. She wakes up, and the thought of a good bag of jellybeans, that just puts a smile on her face. I really get a feeling about how much she loves jellybeans. I can picture her happiness, and her love seems much more enthusiastic, much more genuine. I see giving her a bag of jellybeans and her face just lighting up, like I really made her day by giving her a bag of jellybeans. The first Carinne? I give her the same bag, she might smile, say thank you and even give me a half-assed hug, but it won't be anything like the second one, and odds are, I probably won't buy her another bag. And the craziest thing about it all? They're both the same sentence. One used italics, the other played by the rules. And what do they always say about playing by the rules? That you should do it, but not always.

I googled Matthew McConaughey earlier to figure out how to spell his name and I left the window open while I typed this e-mail. One of the first images that pops up on google is him staring at the camera with a creepy smile. So for the last twenty minutes, Matthew McConaughey has been creepily staring at me, and now I'm unsettled. I just closed google, and now he's gone. I don't miss him.

By now you're probably realizing this is the literary equivalent to a prank call. I started this with no real purpose in mind. I had nothing really that I wanted to share with you that I hadn't already shared. 

I'm still debt free. I leave for Florida on Tuesday, and I'll be there for a week to watch Ryan compete in the Ironman this Saturday. 

Maybe I should have said that at the beginning. But then again, we could spend our life wondering maybe... Maybe I should have asked if he was eighteen... Maybe I should have worn underpants today... Maybe I should stop spending my weekends looking for buried Civil War ironclad submarines full of chests with gold... 

Notice the italics?

-Ed

Halloween

It is Halloween weekend in Austin, which means tens of thousands of people, wearing all sorts of costumes will head down to 6th street tonight and drink. I wish I could dress it up more [wow -- only two sentences in and already he's wielding such clever puns?] -- but tonight boils down to two things: costumes and alcohol. It is this simplicity that appeals to the young adults of Austin. Become somebody else and get drunk. Sounds fun enough.  And it is also this simplicity that makes tonight a "no refusal" night for the Austin Police Department -- meaning if you are pulled over, you have no right to refuse a breathalyzer test. [I feel a desperate need to write a sentence, cleverly talking about the "tricks and treats" found on 6th street, but I just can't bring myself to do it.]


I've been in Austin for four Halloweens now, which roughly equates to four years, which roughly equates to twenty-eight dog years, which roughly equates to .000000786 light years. I must admit something to you. I lied about the light years number. [A light year, contrary to its name, measures length not time.] 














I'm glad we've left all that behind. The lies, the light years. 


We're back to Halloween. You're probably wondering what it's like to be on 6th street, surrounded by drunk people in costume. You might also be wondering how many light years long 6th street is itself -- but we've agreed to not talk about light-years, remember? 


All that I can share with you is what 6th street is like on Halloween. I've been one of the 10,000+. 


It was a few Halloweens ago and Joe was sick and decided to stay home and rest, so Brogan and I went downtown in costumes that we had obtained from our friend's girlfriend at the time [my friend and the girl are broken up, but Brogan still proudly holds on to the costume]. Brogan went as a playboy bunny -- complete with bunny ears, a short dress that had a cottontail on the rear and showed his chest hair, and tube socks that nearly tore as they went up his legs. I was a naughty police officer, which was really just a tube-top dress with a badge on the front complemented by a hat too small for my head and a set of toy handcuffs. The dresses covered all the essential parts they must cover, though it was far too cold to be wearing dresses, but we wore them anyways and with his bunny ears and my officer's hat, we went downtown to be one of the ten thousand. 


If that night proved anything to me, it is that the best costume a man can wear on Halloween is one that makes him look like a woman. [Is it sad that these are the life lessons I'm learning?] 


For instance, I can't tell you the number of times I walked into a bar and spotted another naughty cop -- though this one was actually a woman [or at least looked the part more than I did] -- and I'd go over to her and say something like "this town isn't big enough for two sheriffs," or "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think you're out of your jurisdiction here." If she understood the word jurisdiction, they'd laugh and just like that, the awkward first step of approaching a girl, of staring rejection and humiliation in the face was broken because I was wearing the same dress she was. [A lesson I definitely plan to impart to little Jack -- possibly during the conversation he and Joe have over beers on his 15th birthday]. 


The night carried many similar triumphs. When Brogan and I walked down the street, we were constantly stopped and asked to take photos, which we were more than happy to do [Brogan looked like pedophile, and I looked like a character from Silence of the Lambs with my toy gun pointed at the camera], and then after the photos were taken and reviewed and laughed at, they would hug us and thank us and carry on down the street and so would we, wondering why the hell we were more desirable to women when we wore a dress. 


I drank a fair amount that night, but I do remember one conversation with surprising clarity. 


-"You look hot in that dress," a drunk woman said to me as I stood outside a bar. Not the normal opening line to a conversation, I grant you.
-"Thanks. I was going to get it in a small, but decided it might be a little too scandalous."
-"I think they would have arrested you if it got any smaller," she said.
-"I'm a cop, remember?" I flashed her the handcuffs and badge, to prove I actually was a cop. "And as far as I'm aware, being sexy isn't a crime." 


She laughed. The truth is that "being sexy" can be a crime, especially if it involves indecent exposure /lewd conduct. But she wasn't the type of girl to mention things like that. 


As I stood outside the bar, I started to look around. 


-"What are you looking for?" she astutely asked.
-"My friend."
-"What do they look like?"
-"He's six-foot three, and he's wearing a black dress."
-"What?"
-"I said he's six-foot three, and he's wearing a black dress."
-"Your friend's wearing a black dress?" she asked.
-"Yes," I said, though a sarcastic nooo would have worked just as well. "He's got on bunny ears and tube socks, too," I added, just in case there were other tall guys in black dresses. I didn't want her wasting my time with false alarms.


She looked at me to see if I was being serious. I was.


-"I haven't seen him," she said. She was a pretty girl, but as you can tell, she had an unpleasant tendency to tell you things you already knew. 
-"Well let me know if you do."
-"Are you gay?" she asked.
-"Am I gay?"
-"Yeah. Are you gay?"
-"Why? Because I'm looking for a tall guy in a dress, or because I'm a tall guy in a dress?"
-"Both."
-"What do you think?" I asked her.
-"I think you're gay."
-"How would you feel if I told you I'm not gay?"
-"I'd tell you to prove it."


I stared at this girl for a second, and even as she bathed in the generous view that I hold everybody in when I've had too much to drink, I couldn't find any desire to prove anything to her. 


-"I'm gay," I said. 


And then I walked off to find Brogan so we could go to another bar.




Tonight I didn't partake in the madness. I worked [though I did dress up as a woman -- one of our bartenders, who we decided looks better than I do in jean shorts], and when I was done with work I went home and slept until I woke up for no reason at 12:30 am, which is why I'm up now and writing this blog. It's strange to think that a few miles away there are naughty cops and playboy bunnies stumbling down the street, trying to find a way home, trying to find somebody drunk enough to sleep with. It is strange to think I was one of them. 


It is even stranger to think about how famous a person must be before they can be assassinated instead of murdered. 

Looking the World In the Face

"He looks the whole world in the face,

 for he owes not any man."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The Village Blacksmith" was published by Longfellow as part of a poetry collection titled Ballads and Other Poems in 1841. It is what you expect from a Longfellow poem -- musical, simple, at times didactic. The poem, as you could guess, centers around a village blacksmith; a hard-working, church-going, widowed husband and a loving father. If you have a few minutes -- for that's all it really takes to get through it -- you should give it a read. At the very least, you can then tell people you've been reading poetry, which makes them think you're deep and sophisticated; that you're the kind of person that chooses to read poetry because you get poetry. 

But I mention Longfellow's poem because I read it a few days ago [see - aren't you impressed?], and the line about looking the world in the face -- it floored me. 

*************

I'm not sure where or when to begin.

We very often try to forget our shame, to bury it beneath enough memories until it blurs and fades to nothing more than a faint recollection. It's a form of self-preservation, no different than your brain telling your body that you must walk when you're tired, that you simply can't go on. The truth is you can almost always keep going. But sometimes it's easier to stop, it's easier to forget. 

So when I say I don't really remember, I'm being honest. I have spent the last five, maybe six years trying to distance myself from it, to make it less real. 

If only it were all that easy to leave behind. 

I'll start with what I remember in San Diego. That seems as good a place as any. 

In San Diego, Mom and Dad paid for my tuition and deposited some spending money in my account each month. This worked well for the first few months, especially since I had a card that I could go to a school cafeteria and buy food and books with. 

As the semester moved along, I found that I was running low on money towards the end of each month -- not on account of how much my parents were sending me, but because my spending was growing as I became more and more social. The purchases weren't outlandish -- over seventy percent of it went to beer and fast food; the staple diet of any college freshman. They were simply needless, and had I been able to show a little more restraint, they would have been completely avoidable. But women and beaches are mighty hard to resist, and they both go well with beer, so I kept buying.  

Not wanting to ask my parents for more than they were already doing for me, I opened up a credit account. 

A quick side-note: too many parents obsess and try and influence their child's every move from grade school right up through college. They check to make sure their homework's done. They help choose the courses to be studied. They have access to e-mail and bank accounts. They are Big Brother parents, who say they trust you but constantly monitor you like a felon. Fortunately, my homework was rarely checked, my e-mails never read. If I had a problem, I could always go to them and ask for help -- but it was my decision to do so, and that made all the difference. 

So I was able to open up this credit account without anybody else knowing. It helped me stay afloat when I'd normally be broke and stuck with cafeteria food [another thing that could have helped me stay afloat was to spend less, but that of course, was not an option]. Then, when I got my spending money at the beginning of the month, I'd pay off whatever I owed on the credit card. This of course meant that at the end of the next month, I'd be short again and would have to use the credit card. But it was the best system I had, and more importantly, I had it under control. 

The truth is, when you have no income -- which I didn't -- any debt you have is out of control.

So on and on this little game went; using the credit card, catching up, using the credit card, catching up, with the numbers growing a little bigger each time.

And then one month I couldn't pay it all off. So I didn't. 

The rest of this story is obvious. The sum grows. Since I'm using some of the spending money to try and pay it back, I find myself using the card earlier and earlier each month, so now it's reaching numbers that I'm not comfortable with, that I can't control. Factor in a missed payment one month, steep interest each and every month -- and now things are desperate.  

The toughest part about all of this was that I there was no one to point the finger at but me. My parents weren't being tight-fisted and cutting back. In fact, they would often call and ask how I was doing and if I needed a little extra help. I would just say everything was fine and then try and change the subject. But it was there, in the back of my mind, in the back of every conversation. I wanted to tell them, to ask for even more than they were already doing. But I just couldn't. 

And then one day I could. I had to. 

I don't remember whether I'd moved to Austin or not. I just remember the conversation and holding the phone so tight I thought I was going to break it. I called Dad and told him everything. I cried because I'd never felt like less of a man; creating problems I couldn't even fix myself, problems that I had to run to Daddy and ask him to fix for me. When I had finished explaining everything, there were a few seconds where the line was silent. 

-"How much do you need?" he asked in a calm voice.

After I told him there were a few more seconds of silence.

-"All right. Don't worry. I'll take care of it. One one condition: that you cut up the credit card."

He's been a better Dad than I deserved at times, and I consider this to most certainly to be one of them. There was no lecture, no stiff rebuke, no demeaning, no threats. He just said that problems that can be solved by money are the best kind to have. And then before he hung up he told me that he was still proud of me, that he still loved me. 

That should be the end of this story. But it actually is just the beginning. 

I was most certainly in Austin when I met Carinne. I'd transferred from San Diego to UT. It was a new school in a new city, and somehow I'd even managed to find a new job. 

A quick side-note: I've discovered that the best way to get a job is to lie. Most place won't hire you unless you have experience, but you can't get experience unless you have a job. A brilliant system. So I lied -- not because I enjoy lying, but because that was the only way I saw to landing a job. I lied because I knew I could learn if I was given the chance.  

So I lied and got a shitty job waiting tables in some casual dining restaurant where I made enough to justify showing up for each shift. I hated practically every second of it -- the bending over for the customer, the non-slip shoes, the complaints about food I didn't cook, the tables you busted your ass for that didn't tip -- but it was there, in that casual dining restaurant, that I met Carinne and fell in love with her. 

At this point, my parents were paying my tuition, rent, and still sending me some spending money. I had a girlfriend I adored. I had a job that gave me a little extra cash. I was getting straight A's. I got to hang out with my brother on the weekends and drink beers and watch football. The credit card, at Dad's request, had been cut up and thrown away long ago. 

I think most sons looks up to their fathers, or want to at least. Fortunately, my Dad was easy to idolize. He was the strongest man I knew, the smartest, the funniest. I loved watching the Tour de France because it meant I could watch it with him. I loved football because every kid wants to score a touchdown in front of their Dad. I loved Bali because Dad taught me how to body surf. He was everything I wanted to be. 

I write this because in our family, Dad was the backbone and Mom was the heart. And so I tried to be the backbone for Carinne. We were both in school, in love, and waiting tables. So whenever possible, I paid for dinner. I paid for everything I could. Not because she ever asked -- in fact, she often protested to me paying. I did anyways, because the man I wanted to be would pay for things like that. It was a way to show her how much I cared, to make things a little easier for her, even if it made things much tougher on me. I could handle it. 

I didn't have a credit card, but I did have overdraft protection on my debit card, which was linked to my credit account. I'd cut up the card but left the credit account open because a banker had told me your credit score drops if you close it. So it stayed open. 

With overdraft protection, if you don't actually have enough money in your debit account for what you're trying to purchase, the bank will charge you a $35 fee, and then transfer however much you need in to your account. 

Well, I overdrafted seven times in one month. Each overdraft brought a $35 fee, not to mention what I had actually paid for. When I finally checked my bank account, my stomach dropped.  

But I continued to spend. Not outrageous things. Dinner and drinks. A night out for me. Flowers and movie tickets. Little road trips. But they add up. Especially with $35 fees sprinkled in. 

My credit limit was higher than before, and within a year so, I had hit the limit. I can't explain why I hadn't stopped before then. You just reach a point where you think "what difference does another $50 make?" And you realize that it doesn't make much of a difference, so you just swipe the card, knowing that the $70 meal will actually cost you $105, but what difference does $105 make? 

So here I was, back in a hole. 

This time, I swore I wouldn't call Dad. Not because I couldn't -- but because I didn't want to him write another check and fix this again for me. I thought about the money and how if he sent it to me it meant he wouldn't buy himself a new bike. I couldn't live with that. So I decided that I would fix this. No matter how long it took, I would fix this.

But the truth was I couldn't fix it myself. Not yet. I had maxed out a credit account without owning a credit card. The first thing I needed was some breathing space. So I called Jim and Amelia. I remember that conversation a little better. I remember pacing outside my apartment, humiliated yet again. Again, the only questions that Jim asked were "how much do you need?" and "are you sure you don't need more?" The truth was I did need more. I needed a lot more than I was asking for. But I was too embarrassed to admit how big my mistake was. To show how much I'd messed up. So Jim sent the check and I ducked below my credit limit and wondered why I was so fucking dumb with money.  

How to repay my brother in law, not to mention thousands more to a bank when I was in school, with a girlfriend, and waiting tables making $60-80 a shift?

The answer to that is that you don't pay it off that way. You simply can't. And I didn't. The amount I owed stayed pretty much the same for the next two-three years. I'd make the monthly payments of a few hundred dollars, but that did nothing because all I was really doing was paying off the interest. And when I could, I'd send Jim and Amelia a few hundred dollars, but I could rarely do that, and any free money I had I wanted to put towards the credit card because I was paying interest on that. And with the little I knew about money, I knew the less there was in my credit account, the less interest I would have to pay and so the easier it would be to pay it off.  

Around this time, I started letting the money and the debt affect my relationship with Carinne. I would be upset because I couldn't pay for things like I wanted. I would sit at home and write for entire weekends, convinced that a script was the only way I could ever buy my way out of this debt. I didn't feel like a man, because I couldn't buy my girlfriend a nice dinner or take her out randomly and buy her a new pair of shoes. Now to sit here and blame all of our problems on my debt would be the easy route. It certainly caused some tension, and didn't help, but I was far from perfect in other areas, and that played a role, probably a bigger one in why our relationship ultimately did not last. 

After I graduated, I thought things would be different. I'd find a real job, I'd knock the debt out, I'd re-kindle the strained relationship. That was the light at the end of the tunnel. Graduation. Just graduate. That would fix everything. 

It didn't work like that. I graduated college and got my diploma in the mail and was still a waiter, still in debt. And somehow, being out of school made me feel worse about it all. And that was that.  

During these tough years, there were periodic conversations with Dad that made it even tougher. He'd look at me and tell me how proud he was, how amazing it was to be my age and to have big dreams and no debt. So many times I wanted to crack, to tell him that I'd cut up the card but that I'd fucked up yet again and was still in debt. That I was so sorry, that I stayed up nights thinking of ways to make thousands of dollars, that I'd looked at papers and thought about plasma donations, even selling the truck he'd given me -- anything to be the debt-free son he thought I was. But I couldn't. I just changed the subject. "If he ever asked me directly, I'd tell him the truth." That was how I convinced myself I wasn't lying. I of course knew he'd never ask me directly, just as he'd never asked me about my homework.  

Then I stopped waiting tables and found a new job working in a bar. It wasn't much better at first, but it beat having people complain to you about cold soup. I started in winter at the door. I stood there, freezing my ass off, not making much more than when I was a waiter. But this job had the promise of becoming a bartender, which promised a significant pay increase. There was a new light at the end of the tunnel. 

So I worked all the shifts nobody else would work. I learned how to barback, and so I saved the bar money by working barback and door in the same night, even doing both of the closing duties by myself. It was miserable -- it took me close to two hours just to get through all the closing chores each night: take all the chairs from outside and carry them inside. Take all the TVs down from outside and carry them in. Wipe all tables outside. Wipe all ashtrays. Sweep any cigarette butts outsides. Mop and sweep bathroom floors. Clean all bar glassware. Pick up all drain covers and soak them in bleach. Mop inside floor and behind bar. Soak all bar mats. Wipe all tables and stools inside. Empty all trashcans in dumpster outside and hose out trash cans. Make sure storage unit is locked - but I did it. And each night I'd come home, six nights a week, exhausted from the shift, not wanting to clean a damn thing again. 

I was promised bartending shifts for what seemed months on end, but each time the schedule came out I had the same barback/door shifts. Since I was working so much and had no time to spend the money I was making, things were getting a little more comfortable financially, but I was still staring at thousands and thousands of dollars of debt. But finally, my debt had stabilized -- no more thoughts of plasma donations or selling the truck -- the only problem was that it wasn't dwindling either. 

Even when it's stagnant, debt is still an incredibly unpleasant burden. The best way I can think to describe it is a cancerous tumor. There is something inherently awful in it. And when it spreads, there is sense of overwhelming helplessness. When it's stagnant, there's the fear that it will somehow awake and multiply again and again as it always seems to, or even if it doesn't spread, it will anchor itself and never leave. The only way to truly rid yourself of it is to cut it out, to keep cutting until there is not a single cell left. There are of course, huge holes in this comparison. Debt is almost always self-imposed, while cancer [except in smokers], is almost always not. But the point is they are both hideous things, capable of destroying everything they contact, and your life is better without it. 

After months of working myself to the brink of unhappiness, I finally got my first bar shift. And then before I knew it, I had five. Some of them were the slow shifts were you didn't make much, but there were a few where did you make a lot, and so it was worth it. All of a sudden I went from making $70-80 a shift, to now making $250-400. Other days were even better than that. 

At this point in my life, I could support myself financially for the first time. Rent. Bills. Gas. Anything and everything. I earned and paid for it all. Not only was I paying for everything, but on good weeks, I had more than enough cash left over to start making dents in the debt I owed to the bank. So I started making $500 payments to the bank. Then one month it was $1,000. 

Just a few weeks ago I made the last payment to the bank. I walked in and asked the teller what my credit card account balance was. When she told me, I reached into my pocket and pulled out an envelope stuffed with the cash I'd put away for the last month. I smiled and told her that I could pay it right now. 

I had checked my account balance before I walked in. But I just wanted to hear her say it one last time.

After a few impatient days of waiting for it to clear, I checked my online statement and saw this:

To describe that feeling, that moment when I saw nothing but zeros -- it's impossible. A song came to mind though. Etta James's At Last. 

Then, after working 11 days out of 12, I had saved up enough to write Jim and Amelia their much overdue check. Not once since they'd lent me the money had they ever pressured or asked me about it. 

I sent it off earlier this week.

********

And so here I am, days after sending the check off to Amelia and Jim, reading "The Village Blacksmith." I'm reading about this hard-working, proud man who looks the world in the face. And then I stop reading. 

I stopped because I realized that I not only carried the debt, but I carried so much shame along with it. I avoided going to the bank and checking my bank account because I didn't want to be reminded of how bad it actually was. I didn't want the teller to look at my account and see I had overdrafted four times and that I was over my credit limit. I avoided conversations with my Mom and Dad because I didn't want to chance that a conversation about debt would come up. I spent so many years trying to sweep it under the rug, do anything but confront it. In those years I let it affect me, I let it affect my relationship, my belief in myself. There were times when it almost won. 

But the real reason I stopped reading because it didn't win. I stopped because I now can look the world, and more importantly, my family in the face and not have anything to hide. I owe not any man. 

While it is easy to take all the credit, the truth is I wouldn't be writing this without my family. They carried me through the patches I'd like to forget. I wouldn't have made it if Joe and Ellie hadn't picked up the phone when I called and told me everything would be ok, that I would find a way to pay it all off one day. I wouldn't be here if my parents hadn't provided money for rent and living expenses for me even after I'd left college. And Jim and Amelia -- well you know how important, how patient they were in all of this. 

It has taken much longer than I would have liked, but I'm debt-free. I'm financially independent. In fact, I've got a savings account that has money in it and a credit account that has nothing on it. There are no more half-truths, no more wincing when I hear the word "debt." The word is now just something I'm glad to have overcome. I mopped up vomit, stayed awake at night, cooked hot dogs for a week, stood in the cold for nine hours a night -- I did all that and so much more to rid myself of it, and now here I am, alive, determined never to repeat, determined never to forget. 

I'm saving and planning for a trip somewhere next year. I haven't even picked the continent yet. Europe sounds nice, but so does South America. Ireland routinely comes to my mind for reasons I can't place. I picture it as rainy, green and cold, which sounds as good a place as any to write and read. But then again, so does Belize. 

Wherever I go, I'm taking a copy of Longfellow's poem with me. I'm going to stand some place beautiful and read the words again. I'm not sure what I'll do after that. Maybe if it's night time in Ireland I'll stand and look at the stars. Or if it's Brazil I'll go down to the beach and fall asleep to the sound of the water. 

Or maybe I'll just do what I did a few nights ago after I read the poem. I'll grab a cold beer, sit down somewhere quiet, and smile as I take the first sip. 

"His brow is wet with honest sweat,

He earns whate'er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,

For he owes not any man."

A Kitchen

Much to my delight, I got a text from Amelia this morning telling me that she was awake and on Skype if I wanted a chat. I've decided that my favorite time of day is early early morning [4am-7am], and so instead of trying to wake up for it, I just stay awake for it. It was chilly at 4 am this morning, so I went for a long walk by myself and listened to simple music and looked up at the stars. The sky was dark and clear, and I thought about all the different places I've seen the stars from and all the places I want to go, and then tried to picture what the sky looks like at night there. Once I'd been out long enough, I returned home and warmed my hands until they tingled and then began to write. Not long afterwards, I got Amelia's wonderful text message.

So we're back where we began. 

I immediately hopped on Skype and called Amelia. I got a "Hiiii Ehwah!" from Lilly as Amelia disappeared and then returned with little Jack, who I saw for the first time. His tiny body was wrapped in a swaddle and so all I really saw of him was his chubby cheeks and his full head of hair and his little eyes which opened a few times. What a gorgeous little guy. 

Amelia held him and patted him gently on the back, and she had the glow of a proud mother as she talked about how he's sleeping well already and how he burps like a boy. Lilly, of course, was much more active than Jack. She was roaming around the house, bringing Amelia a MacBook [in case she needed it], and then "choo-chooing" as she played with her train set. She would walk right up to the camera and smile and then hop away, like the little bunny Gigi always calls her. 

The highlight of the conversation was when Amelia asked Lilly to talk about her Christmas list. (Joe has written a fantastic blog about this list, and before you go any further, I highly recommend reading it.)

Lilly promptly [through the translator Amelia] relayed the list to me: an orange bike, orange bike grease, a horsie, and a kitchen. 

- "And who's getting you the horsie?" Amelia asked.

-"Joef."

-"That's right, Joef is getting you a horsie for Christmas," Amelia said, fighting back a laugh. 

Amelia and I laughed about this list -- it is so sweet, so all over the place, so Lilly. I laughed because Joef had been tasked with getting a two-year old a live horse, and somehow, like the list itself, that just seemed perfect.

And then Lilly said something which Amelia translated for me again.

-"Oh, and Edward's going to get you the kitchen?"
-"Yeah."

And so, as if we needed any more validation, Lilly is officially Amelia's daughter. Not only is it October and she's already got her Christmas list laid out, but she's now delegating who's going to get her what, to be sure that there are no gaps come Christmas time.

But just to recap: Joe gets off with a horse [a terrible sentence when taken out of context], and I'm stuck with an entire kitchen. Now Joef's horse doesn't look so bad at all. And all that's left for Santa is the bike and some bike grease.

The conversation ended a few minutes later -- little Jack had nodded off in Amelia's arms and it was time to put him down for yet another nap. And as Lilly smiled and waved goodbye, I felt a sense of dread. Come Christmas time, I'm destined to disappoint my goddaughter. Joef can get her a plastic horsie if he's too lazy to hunt down a real one, and Santa I'm sure will be able to find some little orange bike and some orange grease to go along with it [and maybe some orange carrots for the horsie?] But a kitchen? How in God's name am I supposed to give my goddaugther an entire room? And not just any room. Your basic American kitchen has:

1) a stove

2) a sink [with running hot and cold water]

3) a fridge

4) a freezer

5) tile floors

6) a microwave

7) a dishwasher

8) countertop space

9) cupboards

10) an oven

How the hell am I supposed to carry all that on a plane?  

And how the hell do you give a little girl a kitchen? 

Thoughts/suggestions/prayers welcome.

"Stay In Position"

Every now and then a man or woman walks into the bar and I look at them and I just know. I can't exactly explain what I know, but I just do. It's the uncannily accurate intuition that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Blink; you're not sure why you're so certain, or why this person elicits such a reaction, but you are certain nonetheless.


One of my first nights I ever bartended, a woman came into the bar at 1:45 am. We close at 2, and I do last call at 1:50. So she walks in at 1:45 and right away I know. After a few minutes of walking around the bar she hasn't ordered a drink. Finally, she finds a seat at the empty bar and then proceeds to tell me about a crack pipe a homeless man left in her truck and how lucky she had been to find it before the cops did. She then talked about her dead cat and how it had been murdered by an employee at one of the bars and she was determined to find out who. I joked that I was allergic to cats -- that the cat had a better chance of killing me than I did it -- but she didn't seem to get it and somehow she segwayed the conversation back to the planted crack pipe. She left at 2:10, which is when we ask everybody to leave. She still hadn't ordered a drink, though she had asked me for a cigarette. It was a bizarre encounter, though completely expected. 


Tonight, When Duffy came in, I knew. There was something in his unsteady walk, in the way his eyes opened a bit too wide. The unkept and graying five o'clock shadow. The t-shirt tucked into the jeans; and the jeans were about three or four inches below his nipples. It wasn't any one of these by themselves. It was all of them together. But it was more than that. It was the way you felt when you looked at him and when he looked at you. Not a sense of fear, but rather one of reluctance, of oddity. That you could both look at the same thing and be worlds apart, and that in fact, as you looked at each other you were already worlds apart. 


Duffy came in and was kind enough to order a drink -- "whiskey coke, though I wouldn't mind if you went heavy on the whiskey and light on the coke, hehehe," -- and I made the drink to his liking, which prompted him to call me "a gentleman and a learned scholar," which is much different than being a gentleman and an unlearned scholar. Even though I have conversations every day with people I've never met before and I routinely see people on their worst nights, I knew almost instantly that the conversation I was about to have with Duffy would be a special one. And I was right, although in truth it wasn't much of a conversation because Duffy did practically all of the talking. He had this amazing ability to keep a conversation alive by throwing a "yeah" in after he'd completed his thought, and then it was as if I'd agreed with what he'd just said so he felt obliged to tell me something else that he could help me agree with.  


After he'd taken a strong sip, he dove right in.  


-"Yeah man, I love clubs like this... Yeah. I live around here, so I walk everywhere. Never worry about parking and all that crap. Only thing you gotta worry about are the damn criminals who'd rob a nickel off you if that was all you had. Not like they care whether you got a nickel or a million nickels, they'll take it all the same and buy drugs and whatnot with it. I mean, me, I'd buy another drink he-he-he..Yeah, I was at this joint the other night [he says the name of a gay bar located four or five blocks east of my bar], and man, they pour strong drinks down at that club... Wooh!... After I'd had a few, this guy came up to me and told me he wanted to have sex with me, and I mean, this guy was big. Bigger than a bear...Sorry, I'm talking too much, aren't I?"
-"Not at all."
-"Yeah... So I tell the huge guy, and I mean, he's bigger than you are, probably twice as heavy, and he's got a beard too, real big guy, I tell him, 'I got the best urologist in Texas and he can't fix what I got.' I tell him that the urologist said that my dick's broken. The big guy looks at me and is like 'c'mon, man!' And boy, would you wet yourself if you saw a man that size begging. Like a kid who wants candy, ya know? He-he-he... And I keep telling him that I got a broke dick and... Yeah... I guess I forgot what the whole point of the story was. Just funny I guess... Sorry, I'm probably annoying you..."
-"You're not annoying me, I promise... I'm Ed by the way."


I extend my hand out. He takes it, though applies little to no pressure in the squeeze-part of the handshake. What else should I have expected?

-"Ed? That's my middle name. Edmund. But my first name's Duffy."
-"You've got a fine middle name."
-"Yeah. It's not bad."
-"Not bad? I can't think of a name that's much better. Besides Duffy, of course," I said.
-"You know what you are, Ed?"
-"A gentleman and a learned scholar?"
-"You're a guy that gets it... Yeah, I mean, I get it too, if you know what I mean. Just some people do. And other people don't. Most people don't."
-"I get it," I say, to validate his estimation of me.
-"Yeah... I've been having a rough time of it recently. Seems like I'm the only one, ya know?.. Yeah, so I been smoking hash. You could say a fair amount of it, he-he-he."
-"How's that treating you?"
-"The hash?"
-"Yeah."
-"It makes other things easier...I mean, I'm not selling it or anything. I just came in to a good quantity of it, good stuff too, and I just keep it. No plans to distribute. No. Thank. You. I been in trouble with the law one too many times to try stuff like that. Only thing I try to do with it is smoke it, and I do a good enough job with that, he-he-he... I'm a musician, or I was before you know, so I studied under the symphony. Played six instruments."
-"Six instruments?"
-"You bet."
-"Which one are you best at?"
-"Oh... Probably recorder. I play piano well, and guitar I can do well... And I have drums but I don't have sticks, but if I had sticks I'd play 'em about as well as the guitar... Sorry. I'm probably keeping you from doing things you oughta be doing right now, aren't I?"
-"Not at all, Duffy." 
-"Yeah... When I was learning guitar, my teacher, he was classically trained and all that, and he charged two bucks a session, can you believe that? Two bucks a session?.. Yeah. He used to hit my knuckles with that stick they conduct symphonies with. I think his was a little wider, though he-he-he. He used to hit my knuckles and say "stay in position!" because if you're out of position, then you can't play like you can when you're in position. I used to ask him, "what'd you do that for?" and he'd say "because you're out of position." I still remember that. "Stay in position."... Yeah... He taught me pretty much everything I know about the guitar, and if I was to bring my guitar in here, you'd see what I'm talking about. I might be a little rusty, but my position would be perfect."


It went on and on like this. He finished his drink and bid me farewell, constantly apologizing for how much he was talking, but then consistently continuing to talk until he needed to apologize again. 


-"Goodbye," he said.
-"Duffy," I said, "Nice to meet you."
-"Ed, right?"
-"Yeah."


I reached out and shook his hand. Having learned from the first time, I applied little-to-no pressure against Duffy's hand, which he seemed to appreciate. 


-"Stay in position," I told him.


He looked at me, smiled and nodded.


-"Stay in position," he echoed.  It was the last thing he said before he turned and left and disappeared back to wherever he kept his recorder and hash. 

Walking In The Rain

I was lying on my bed, reading, when I heard the rain against the roof and the glass. I put down my kindle, walked out to the front porch and stood there, watching the rain fall in the dark morning. The rain was accompanied by the wind, and so standing beneath the porch occasionally I'd feel the spray on my face and hands.


I stood there for a few minutes, watching, listening. It had been a while since Austin or I had last seen the rain.

I went back to my room and put on a camouflage hoodie from Guatemala, a pair of running shorts, slipped on my flip-flops, and grabbed my flashlight. Fashion has never been one of my strong suits, and I know it's a bad sign when I am aware of how ridiculous I look. 

Donning this strange getup, I walked back outside, this time not stopping beneath the porch. 

I walked in to it all, forgetting that my glasses were on. Within seconds I could see nothing but fog and water droplets, so I stuffed my glasses into a pocket and everything, already hazy in the fog and blurred by the water, became a little less sharp.

And I walked. Past "do not enter" signs, past trees bowing to the wind, past houses with christmas lights. I walked through a storm that Singapore would have been proud of -- turning streets into little creeks, flashes of lightning making everything bright as day for a second, maybe less. My flip-flops made lots of noise, though not quite as much as the intermittent thunder. I walked through the neighborhood park, my flashlight cutting through the rain to make sure I avoided stray branches and massive puddles.


Every now and then I would stop walking and just listen to the thunder and the rain and the wind.


Somewhere along the way my mind left the neighborhood and found its way into the place where I keep my dreams, my picture of the future. And as certain as it was raining, I could see what my dreams were. I want to see the rain of Southeast Asia again, and to sit in a pub in Ireland as I shake off the rain and the cold. I want to come home from a 90 mile rides in the rain and take an absurdly long hot shower with amazing water pressure and then rest my legs and read and watch movies until I fall asleep. I want to come home to a happy house, where there's a view of something beautiful and simple. I want to fly into the great cities of the world at night because there's something stunning about the mixture of light and darkness and being so high above it all.  I want to pick up the phone and call everyone I love and just say "I did it... I actually did it."


And then the thunder would crack across the sky and I'd be back in a quiet neighborhood, dressed like a child who's been given the permission to decide their own outfit for the first time. I'd click my flashlight on, make sure there wasn't anybody following me and no stealthy water snakes trying to sneak a bite on my ankle and then I'd move along, wondering what the rain felt like in Ireland and what Berlin looks like at night.