Married Man

This Place Stinks

2006-09-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

1977 marked the year my childhood really went down the emotional toilet. Things weren’t going all that well before that. In the previous year my mother consummated her position in life as a practicing alcoholic. She drank regularly and acted inappropriately. Her favorite activity was walking around the house drunk and naked with curtains open. Her behavior only made the situation worse as the arguments between my parents escalated to a new level. This new level involved broken lamps and microwaves, hitting each other, and occasional blood on the walls. I was pretty scared.

My father came up with the big event of 1977. He got the brilliant idea have an affair with my aunt. Now, in his defense, my aunt was quite an attractive woman. She stood about 5’8”, blonde, thin and had a figure that wouldn’t quit. Although I heard that same figure has now given up on life, she was quite the looker back then.

There were two essential problems with my father’s plan. The first was the potential for family fallout was terrible. The second was the location these two came up with for their affair was truly ridiculous.

My father earned his keep as a truck driver. He drove 32 wheel semis and hauled crude oil when Michigan was an oil producing state. He hauled the crude oil from the well to the refinery.

The funny thing is that crude oil wells really stink. They smell like a mixture of gasoline, dung and natural gas. Not exactly an aphrodisiac, but my father and aunt decided to hook up in the sleeper of my dad’s company truck at an oil well. She drove 30 minutes, smelled the stink, look at my father in his truck driver clothes and said lets get it on.

They did it with crude oil vapor wafting in the open windows. Sleepers then didn’t normally come with curtains. It was summer and therefore warm. I’m sure they were pretty sweaty.

When they finished up my aunt went home and my father finished his workday. When he returned home he acted like nothing happened. She did too for a while and then guilt overcame her and she told her husband (my mother’s brother). The shakedown from that single crude oil smelling act of debauchery affected everything in my life from thereon. The rest of the family blamed my mother for the whole thing. All this information is according to my mother. I have asked my father and he never denied anything.

Basically the family decided that if my mom had been a better wife none of this would have happened. Surely my dad solicited my aunt and my aunt, being a woman, was powerless and just said “yes I’ll have sex with you anywhere you want.” Since my aunt was powerless and my father would only solicit extra-marital activities if he was in need, then it was my mom’s fault he was in need in the first place. One thing I can verify is that my parents did it a lot. I heard them all the time. Sadly for me, my mom is a screamer. They woke me up all the time. What I’m getting at is that I don’t think my father went looking for extra curricular activities on the side because services weren’t rendered at home. I think he was just an ass. I don’t think my aunt really was powerless, especially now that she tries to be a strong and righteous woman.

The real problem is that these two people made a horrible decision that affected far more people than themselves. They affected directly me, my uncle – the heir to the family farm and family golden boy, and everyone else within the immediate family. What it came down to is that my family needed a scapegoat and they chose my mother because that was the most painless way to deal with the whole situation. My uncle, the golden boy, could suffer no consequences other than his own personal torment, which from what I understand was extensive. My aunt, being the golden boy’s wife, could suffer no real repercussions because, well, she was the golden boy’s wife. My father didn’t suffer because it was my mother’s fault. After this judgment my mother’s drinking became truly legendary and she was ostracized from the family with me along for the ride.

I didn’t see my golden aunt and uncle, or my cousin, for about 4 years. My uncle couldn’t handle the thought of seeing us because it reminded him of his wife’s choice and probably made him want to kill my father. When I did finally see that part of the family again it was well after my mother and father had divorced and my mom worked a pathetic job at a small manufacturing company. The day of the reunion, my golden aunt and uncle came over and picked me up. They took me to the drive-in movie theatre to see Star Trek the Motion Picture. I could tell at 11 years old this was a big deal for my mother even though my aunt and uncle never came inside. I walked out to their car with my mom, she waved and we drove off. I still remember the movie.

To this day my aunt and uncle are still married. Their relationship suffers. They haven’t been intimate for years. My aunt doesn’t seem to like my uncle. She’s a born again Christian and tells her children she’s never consumed alcohol and certainly never done anything like screw my father. I have for her children. I’ve witnessed her consuming alcohol and if she didn’t screw my father then I don’t see what’s in it for the both of them to make up a story like that. The manipulation on her part continues to this day, which is something I actually won’t get into.

Take what you want from this. It’s just a horrible situation rising from some stupidity that happened almost 30 years ago. Yet the idiocy remains as those involved live with a tormented past and continue to bury it.

This Place Stinks

2006-09-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

Let's Get Manipulated!

2006-04-21T03:54:00.000-07:00

Here it is March 17, 2006, 57 years to the day that my mother came into the world. I was blessed last night to receive another drunken phone call from her. It’s really silly how the dance with her works.

She gets drunk and then calls people and tries to act normal or does stuff to give people clues that she’s loaded. Then of course she denies it when confronted. It’s like she packs two games and addictions into one ridiculous experience. Maybe it’s all one big game she plays with herself to keep herself busy and avoid how truly pathetic her life has become.

Here she is at 57, divorcing for the 27th time and lives with her mother. Actually she’s on her 4th divorce. It’s still pathetic if you ask me, but it shows a real commitment to failure and mediocrity. She works for $6.50 an hour as an assistant manager at a Family Dollar. She has the audacity to complain when others get drunk and call her to work for them. I guess even drunks have a moral standard.

The truly sad thing about my mother is she really is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Her cognition is just sick. I consider myself a fairly smart guy. I understand people and ideas rather quickly. I occasionally read philosophy and enjoy new ideas. My mother, however, puts me to shame. I can read her texts aloud to her that I find dense and have to reread numerous times to decipher the author’s meaning and she understands them immediately. I think her hyper intelligence and understanding has been the ballast and main instigator of the way she lives her life.

She developed a highly skilled game of manipulation where she never honestly looks at her world and what she’s accomplished, which is essentially nothing. She plays a role. A role where she pretends to fit in with the simple stupidity of everyone around her. Then for drama and amusement she messes with things by getting drunk or playing some manipulative, head game. This leads to people showering her with bizarre attention and those same people wonder why she does what she does. Little do they know they play the perfect part in what she’s trying to accomplish. They end up manipulated. I seem to be the only one who figured this out.

I remember sitting in a counseling session with her and telling her counselors how my mother was manipulating them. Their eyes got big as I pointed out how their doctrine of responses and recovery worked with her idea of manipulation and addiction. They were shocked. I went on to point out the depth of my mother’s manipulation and how they were actually the butt end of some sick alcoholic’s joke. One counselor in the session, my mother had two at the time, sat there with her jaw hanging slightly open. The other just looked at the floor rather embarrassed. My mother squirmed in the chair next to me. My mother didn’t realize yet I had figured this out. Still my mom enjoyed watching her counselors blown away by what I said. After their meeting with me, her counselors met between the two of them to decide what was best for my mother. They decided their current counseling methods weren’t working and one quit within a month. The other was gone shortly after that.

The paradox is Mom really is a sweet woman. She’s just so caught up in herself that she never really looks at life without jaded eyes. Last night during the blessed phone call she asked again for the 100th time if she could come and visit me and my family. My answer was the same it always has been; sure you can come if you stay in a hotel. But she was drunk, oh and here is one of the little clues, and forgot what the hell I said the last time she called drunk.

The truly humorous moment during the phone call came when her mother knocked on the door to her room. My mother had to quickly exit our conversation because her mother wanted to talk to her. She had something to hide and had to get it out of the way before her mother came in. Five minutes later my mother called back with some lame excuse about why she had to go and proceeded to repeat herself.

I don’t know why someone pushing 60 continues to do what she does, especially with someone almost 85 like my grandmother. I know why she plays the game with me. She does because it’s what she does and that’s all she chooses to know anymore. I do wish she’d stop messing my grandmother and just drink herself into a silent, private oblivion.

On a lot of levels, I find these phone calls annoying. I know what they are about and can get over them with pretty quickly. I also know that my mother is basically a waste of human flesh. She never really does anything beyond creating a personal crisis for herself. Her last marriage ended when she drank in the same house her husband lives in. The hilarious part of this situation is he killed someone in a drunken driving accident a few years previous. One of his parole stipulations was that he may have no alcohol in his home. My mother gets the bright idea to play the, lets get drunk at home game, and screw with her husband’s freedom. He gets angry of course and throws her out. He’s been manipulated!

She complains about him and his awful behavior. Apparently he had an affair, but I have to say that drinking at home was a pretty disrespectful thing for her to do. I mean she could have gotten drunk in the local pub and walked home drunk, then passed out. But noooooooo she had to get drunk at home, maximize the rewards of the manipulation game and risk his probation. Apparently he had had random home checks for alcohol.

My mother is just one of those lost causes everyone deals with in life. There are a lot of great people in the world but she chooses not to be one of them. I’m working on being one and on this St. Patrick’s Day, 2006, my mother’s birthday I sit here at 7 a.m. drinking a beer in her honor. Here’s to you mom. I’ll have the first one of the day. Guess what? I don’t have to hide it either!

Thanks for reading to the end. Seeya next week!

In a post script to this column, my mother actually managed to call me sober. She managed to get her own car and got a second job for a whopping $10 per hour. It’s not much but it’s a start. I’ll quote the script of Vanilla Sky, “every single minute is an opportunity to turn everything around.” It could happen with her but I’m pretty sure I’d pass out holding my breath. The only thing that I can say in her defense is that she finally admitted to the manipulation game. Maybe she will turn it around. The rest of the world will not wait for her to see if she does.

You Have the Potential Damnit!

2006-02-26T21:50:00.000-08:00

The western world holds people to the ideal they must live up to their ultimate potential. If someone has the ability to do something then ultimately they should. Consider fat people: inevitably someone asks, “Why don’t you just lose weight? Why not go to the gym?” Pressure to lose weight just because of the potential to do so causes a problem within our society and creates a rift.

This rift can result in a fat people everywhere wondering what’s wrong with them. Obese people send themselves negative messages because they know they can, in principle, lose weight. Yet they don’t seem to have what it takes to get the job done. This conundrum is the prevailing idea I want to talk about now. Why is it people who have the ability to directly change their lives just not do it?

I realized a few years back that I have more than my fair share of god given gifts in this life. I have an array of talents: singing, drawing, cooking, playing guitar and being intuitive. I’m a pretty good communicator. I have knack for writing my feelings in a way people can relate to. I have a degree and I’m fairly athletic when I play sports. Despite all these “gifts” I still am unemployed, fat and find it hard to get the motivation together to really accomplish anything. Why is it I have so much potential that remains relatively unrealized?

I think the answer lies in a decision I make at a very base level. It’s the thing that alcoholics call their bottom. It’s when people realize something has to change and their lives become unacceptable. Every person has a different threshold for their decision, but that’s not the key. The key is that people must reach this point before they do bring about any personal change.

I have a friend who when I met her five years ago she was already quite fat. In the five years since I first laid eyes on her she looks like she’s doubled in size. She now has fat hanging off her knees and her head is so huge it looks like it’s covered in a fat helmet. Her butt and legs are so big that when we both sit in a car together she sits higher than me. I’m about 5 inches taller than her if we are standing side by side.

The problem with my friend is that she hasn’t reached the point in her mind that will make her change. She is a mere 32 and takes medication for hypertension. A heart attack looms in her near future and all she does is sit around and eat. Her life is cushy. She has a highly marketable chemical engineering degree, lives rent-free in her grandma’s basement and isn’t looking for employment. She spends her time with her computer, her food and her television. Her boyfriend keeps finding excuses not to move closer to her. Yet she maintains that her life is put together and just fine. Maybe it is, but she has a ton of potential. She keeps getting fatter and fatter and it’s pretty scary.

The point is that she hasn’t made a decision to change. She doesn’t like the way she is. She’s intimated to me that she knows what she looks like when she looks in the mirror. I haven’t completely made my decision to change either. It seems like some people have an unlimited capacity for personal pain and it prevents them from changing. It seems like some people are just lazy. I’m not completely sure.

One thing I do know is the willingness to change comes from a place deep within ourselves and it’s the only place I think we have that is truly our own. It’s the only place no one outside of use personally can truly touch. Others can affect this place in us but ultimately it’s our decision as to how we see things.

Our decision to change comes purely from our willingness to change. Basically if we are not willing to change then we are never going to make the decision to change. That’s the difference I’ve found in myself is that I’ve had to become willing to change. From this base I can simply choose what I want to do. With that realization I’ve been able to look at life with much clearer eyes and look at what I want to change.

The changes have proven difficult for me but with the willingness to change I know eventually I’ll get to where I want to be. That’s a great feeling and my past no longer rules my future decisions like it once did. Now I choose to live my life on the other side realize my potential.

As always, thanks for reading to the end.

Grow Up Boy You Are Seven Years Old

2006-02-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

When I was seven years old my parents were in the throws of their ultimate destruction that lasted for the next three years. Life went from being somewhat normal where my father worked 60 hours a week driving a semi and my mother stayed home with me, to this bizarre family war zone. Strangely the only participants in the war were my mother and father. They worked together like fire and water in their dance toward oblivion. I basically stood on the sidelines and pleaded with them for peace.

My mother drank almost constantly at this point. This is also the time she started naked drinking, which was a real treat. She would get drunk and call whomever she could think of and just start yammering about whatever drunk, pathetic people yammer about to people who dutifully listen on the other end of the phone line. I witnessed many conversations. I remember her talking about my father with reckless abandon and no regard for me. Sometimes she would literally go on a rant about the horrible things he did for 10 minutes while I stood right next to her listening. Then she’d realize I was there and yell at me to go to bed.

I was lost behind in this tumult of unreasonable emotions and ineptitude. My father avoided us and banged chicks. I inhaled late 70s asthma medications along with my mom’s cigarette smoke. She smoked her face off and drank. My dog skulked around, with his tail between his legs, in our small 40’ by 20’ modular home. I paint this pretty picture because that’s what I saw through the eyes of a child.

One particular night always strikes me as I recollect these times of my life. It was late and I had gone to bed when I was awakened by a loud argument from the living room. Since the living room was only 25’ from my bed this wasn’t difficult and my parents accomplished waking me in this manner frequently. This night, however, was different.

Generally my father would get all bent out of shape about my mother and take off to some unknown destination. I have thoughts now as to where he went but I’ve never asked and I’m pretty sure if I ever did my father would look me straight in the eyes and lie. My father still averts his eyes when I ask him hard questions from my childhood. Now he faces a man with man size anger and disrespect. As I said, my father was the one who took off and left my drunken mother with me while I “slept”. Of course I didn’t sleep but that was part of the ruse we played.

This night was different. My mother started to yell at my father in the garage louder than normal. I got up a few minutes earlier when I heard my parents go outside and I was terrified they were going to both leave me there alone. I pressed my ear to the wall of the living room to make out what they were saying. All I could hear were hushed tones from my father and my mother yelling at the top of her lungs.

“No, it’s my turn,” she bellowed over and over while my father tried to hush her up. I knew what she was talking about. At seven years old the situation was not lost on me and I knew my mother felt like it was her turn to take off from the home scene. I knew she was even more blasted than usual and also knew that driving drunk was a very bad thing. I was horrified my mother would suggest such a ridiculous transgression. At seven, even with my idiot parents, I knew the potential consequences of getting behind the wheel of a 2-ton projectile when the navigator can barely walk.

Their argument continued for a few minutes until I heard a car door slam. My mother screamed. My stomach turned then I heard the garage door open and I saw our car leave from the front window. I ran into the hall and hid out of sight of the front door until I heard someone come in. A moment later I heard the sounds of my mother sobbing. Slowly I crept back down the hall to my bedroom and closed the door.

I don’t remember what happened after that. I’m sure my dog waited for me in my bed and I probably just went to bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. Perhaps I cried. I wish I could tell you but I’m just not sure.

What’s the point of this story? I think the point is that to a large extent we make our own reality and as adults we get to largely choose the path of our lives. As children we are passengers on someone else’s train. This creates a situation where adults actually have a responsibility to their children not just for themselves.

As always thanks for reading to the end.

It's Time to Make a Decision

2006-01-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

I remember a time in my adult life when I lived far up north in Michigan. It was early December but the weather was unseasonably warm. A high of 68 degrees that day rings a bell and the warmth persisted into night. Normally the temperature at this time of year hovered somewhere between the high teens and mid twenties during the day and the nights were much colder. I walked around town that day in a pair of jeans and t-shirt well after the sunset.

I found myself down by the water that was so important to this small university town. The water of Lake Superior is cold any time of year and as I was near its edge I could feel cool fresh air from the lake brush up against my skin. I walked along the boardwalk and looked at the lights of the town across the water. It was a truly beautiful winter experience, one of those surreal events you experience once or twice a lifetime. I felt nostalgic as it was happening.

My mood turned introspective as I neared the end of the boardwalk. I’d had a couple of beers and the party mood of the town was winding down for the night. No matter how warm it was people still had to get up the next morning and head to work or get to class, but there I was.

I stood there alone and looked at the water. I sat down on the end of the boardwalk and let my feet dangle over the edge. I couldn’t see into the depths where I had swum the summer before. The water was dark and looked rather murky as I went reminisced about the experiences I’d had by this water.

My first marriage fell apart in this town. I’d skinny dipped with one of my ex’s boyfriends along with a group of people in this water. I’d had sex with more than one person on a more remote section of that very boardwalk. Then took a dip then did it again. I’d taken many walks along the shore and played some guitar as well. My heart turned bittersweet as I recalled my life there.

A pensive mood struck me as I sat there thinking. I was alone on the boardwalk. Eventually my thoughts turned to my life as a whole and what it meant to me. I stared into the water and realized I had a decision to make. It was almost like God was asking me a question. I realized that I could just end everything in my life right then and there. I looked down into the water and thought to myself that I didn’t really have to live anymore. All I had to do was let go and slide into the water. The water was icy. Hypothermia and lack of oxygen would take if from there. In about a minute and a half I’d be done, expired. I’d lose consciousness then simply float away and become a part of the ecosystem until someone found me and decided to bury me.

Now I must say here that I did not feel particularly suicidal. I didn’t harbor secret thoughts about my demise. I simply realized how easy it would be to end it all. My life up until that point hadn’t been all that great. I’d done a lot of things I’d wished I hadn’t, but still I didn’t see a reason to kill myself. The odd thing was that I didn’t really feel a strong urge to go on either. I was at a crossroads. Like Robert Johnson before me I found myself faced with a decision that affected the rest of my life.

Right about then I heard a car pull up behind me. I knew it was a police car and briefly looked back to confirm this feeling. There were plenty of police cars around this town. The funny thing was that the normal winter patrol vehicle was a Chevy Blazer. Today the policeman drove one of the cop shop’s Crown Victorias. Then something truly strange happened. The policeman sat there in his car for a moment then got out. Then he walked slowly up behind me to my right and asked me if everything was ok. I looked at him and smiled then made up a story about how my roommate was arguing with his girlfriend and I didn’t feel like sitting there in my apartment listening, which was partially true. The argument had been on the phone and had ended before I left. He smiled, looked down and nodded. Then he told me he just wanted to make sure everything was ok.

It’s funny how my mind’s eye can recall certain instances from my life with surprising clarity. The simplest thing can affect people for the rest of their meager life. This moment was one of those times. That policeman appeared almost out of nowhere and took the time to make sure everything was ok. He could have just driven past and looked to make sure I wasn’t drinking in public. But no he felt compelled by something to check on me. Maybe it was the fact that I was locally famous, I’m not kidding about this, and he recognized me. Maybe it was the fact that it was summer in December, or maybe he had a feeling I might be thinking what I was thinking.

Whatever he thought I got the message that someone somewhere just checked up on me. It was like God looked over my shoulder and said, “well Matt it’s time to go on. You don’t need to do this and I have some things I want you to do.” The policeman was just a messenger, an angel if you will all dressed in blue and wearing a gun.

After the messenger policeman left I sat there for another couple of minutes and smiled. I’d gotten the message and made my decision. I think at some point everyone makes this decision. Everyone is faced with their own life and they have to decide whether or not it’s worth living. Unfortunately, or maybe not, some decide it’s not worth living and they go away. But on that day I decided to go on. I’m glad I did.

That warm summer day in December will always stay true in my mind. I’m glad for the experience. It truly changed something in me and every time I get a chance I wear a t-shirt outside in the winter. Today was one of those days and tomorrow looks like one too. I plan to go for a walk in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Too bad there’s no body of water in this town or I’d walk around that.

As always, thanks for reading to the end.

Scott Became Great, the Great Scott

2006-01-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

During the summer of my twelfth year I saw my parents divorce officially and my mother achieve new lows in parental ineptitude. This is the summer we had lived with Lou the Weaver. Some of you may remember the story about the Weaver from a previous column.

Anyway, that summer portended nice weather and painful mishaps with my diminishing list of friends. I didn’t really know how to relate with people very well at that time. My mother’s obsessive tendencies were not an example of how to make friends. Her “mentoring” was quite possible why I was frequently inappropriate when trying to meet new people. I blame this tendency toward inappropriateness on an overactive and underused brain in an extremely addictive environment.

I was a very intelligent only child. I knew how messed up my life was but I had no recourse to change the situation. I thought that if only I could go live with my father life would improve. The only problem with this pipe dream was that my father didn’t really want me to live with him. He and his wife were swingers, and as far as I understand, they never once went to court to say, “hey, this kid might do better if he lived with us. His mom is a drunk, can’t really hold a job that pays the bills and is a mess.” I guess the prospect of a fat, smart, creative but destructive asthmatic just didn’t appeal to my father.

But this column isn’t really about all that. It’s about my friends and what happened with one of them. The friend I refer to is Scott. I wish I could tell you his last name but libel prevents me from doing such. Scott is a pretty great person. Sometimes now I even think of calling him out of the blue and thanking him for being my friend once upon a time. I’ll explain all this in a moment. Scott showed the kind of insight and heart you rarely find in a male 12 year old. His bushy red hair and smoking habit belied his true sensitivity.

All the kids I grew up with smoked by the way. Even I did. We all lived in the worst part of a stupid little upper class town. In my part of town, when the fire marshal showed up to ask someone if he had a permit to burn his leaves he would escort the fire marshal off his property at gun point. Shortly thereafter the police would escort said leaf burner to jail. This happened more than once. My friends and I smoked because that’s what all the adults did. We might have had sex with each other if any girls were around. Instead we were testosterone machines cruising around bumming smokes off each other. We lived without roll models and did the best we could.

Here’s why Scott was special. One time Scott had spent the night over at my house. He had done this many times before, but this time my mom drove him home drunk. I didn’t even notice because by this time she always smelled like alcohol. She was also pretty good at holding it together in my presence so as not to set me off. But Scott’s mom noticed, and she stopped letting him come over to spend the night. His mom was understandably appalled my mom would drive kids around loaded.

I had no idea of these things of course, so I dutifully called Scott every week to see if he wanted to come over and hang out and spend the night. For a couple of months he said no he couldn’t. He gave me great reasons why and I believed them. I didn’t really have any other friends so I just hung out alone in my bedroom. My bedroom at the Weaver’s house was walled with that great paneling in mobile homes from the 70s. It was dark and depressing.

Finally one Friday I called Scott and asked him to come over and spend the night. I heard a discussion in the background and Scott said he would call me back. Ten minutes later he did and said that he would come over that night and would stay most of the next day. He rode his bike. We only lived about 3 miles away and the ride was pretty safe. We spent the night watching movies and shooting the breeze. We just had a good time hanging out.

That next day we were outside, sitting in the sun and swapping fart stories when he said he had to tell me something. He told me the reason he didn’t come over the last few months wasn’t because he was busy. His mom wouldn’t let him. He said the reason why he made up all the excuses was because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. He also told me the reason why his mom wouldn’t let him come over was my mom’s drunkenness when she dropped him off, her smelly breath and slurred speech. The only reason he even got to come over this time was because he begged his mom. Apparently he knew how much I needed a friend and told his mom so. His mom finally gave in and decided to trust his judgment.

A tear comes to my eye as I write this. I can’t believe the heart that boy showed simply by choosing to be my friend. Eventually we grew apart. My mom separated us by moving to new locations and eventually entered into alcohol therapy. I am not sure if his mom stopped letting him come over. But as things normally go we just drifted apart. I was always happy to see him. Scott was a quiet and shy person. He was short and had fair skin but he meant a lot to me.

Scott was one of those special persons in life. He believed in me as a person when there wasn’t a whole lot to believe in. He did things to help build my confidence. We talked about our dreams and did his best not to let me grow up in a vacuum of confusion and self-doubt. Life is hard enough.

Thanks for reading to the end.

Excellence Lives On

2005-12-27T17:22:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago while leaning against a wall I heard a quote. I cannot remember it exactly now but the point remains the same. The person speaking quoted Joe Paterno, venerable football coach at Penn State University. The quote sounded something like this. Those who strive for something great frequently never achieve excellence and they are constantly worried about losing what they have. While those who strive for excellence frequently accomplish something great in their quest for excellence.

I found this message intriguing. That message pervades as I write this column sitting in a coffee shop. I’m surrounded in an environment of a corporation that did nothing except strive to give people a great tasting product and yummy treats. They now have people all over the world purchasing and drinking lattes and cappuccinos by the score.

This doesn’t mean that I agree with all of their business practices. I know the price of coffee has been kept low over the last few years yet the price of coffee at the shop keeps going up. But, this place has great coffee and I always know I’m going to get an excellent product.

Back to the message in the quote, I took it to heart. I’ve read much about people who build personal empires or rise up from the ashes and right all that wronged them in life. I’ve also seen people who continue to bathe in squalor. The success stories always mean more. They always say to me that I can do it. I can do it. I have to figure out what I want and then go for it.

I’ve written before about greatness. I strive to become something more than I’ve ever been. Currently I’m about 60 lbs overweight. I’m out of shape and up until recently I haven’t worked for 3 years. I can correct each and every one of these things if I choose to do it, if I strive for excellence.

For me excellence is the idea that I set my own expectations and it’s up to me whether or not I meet them. It’s a process. If I work at this process of excellence who knows what may happen at the end?

At work I simply see everyone as a peer with different sets of responsibilities. Not everyone agrees with me but I reconcile my beliefs with others’ expectations or decide to move on. I think this view of my coworkers allows me to expect more of them in a way that’s conducive to higher achievement. I view them positively. Therefore they act in a more positive way. I think this is an excellent way to see the situation.

I used to strive for something great to happen. While in Vancouver I spent time with a man who just wanted money. That’s all he wanted. He fleeced people and shafted them in any way he could. He didn’t care about the people with which he worked. He just wanted money. He thought that if he had money he could travel the world and be happy. He strove for something great. Having someone give him $3 million would be great but he didn’t do much to get it.

I must strive for excellence. If I strive for excellence at all times with my writing then great things will happen. My plan is to write this column, get it self-syndicated, write a novel and then become a public speaker. But first I must be an excellent writer in my own way. My responsibility is to create something that touches people while I help myself. That’s why I share my experiences. That’s why I write.

Great things can fizzle out. However, excellence remains.

Thanks for reading to the end.

I've Been a Failure

2005-12-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted anything. I wrote something a couple of weeks ago and have edited 4 columns so far and my editor hasn't finished her work on them. I thought I would post some lyrics I wrote to a song. I realize this is total bunk but I will have something up in a day or so. Let me know what you think of the lyrics.

The name of the song is, "I'll Be Seein' You." They are currently unedited but bare with me.

I met her in a coffee shop where I invited her out for a drink
She told me to meet her at a topless bar that’s when I really started to think
We spent that night in a smoky room with shadows all around
Everywhere around us was noise but I couldn’t hear me a sound

She took my hand and she held it tight and leaned in close to my ear
She said babe lets take a walk and get ourselves out of here
We walked all night under that moon and shining sound of the stars
All the while she just held my hand and I just looked for her scars

I found myself walking up the street and she told me we were close
I looked at her and I raised my brow and shivered down to my toes
I asked her what do you mean and she told me that I knew
I knew right then that I understood and knew what I would do

If you find yourself standing beside the road thinking what have I done
You look back at the mess you’ve made and whether you gotta run
You sit right down and play with your head and you find out that it’s true
All you can think of and all you can say is what you gonna do
When it’s true… I’ll be leaving you

We wound up there outside of her place and she asked me up inside
I found my self a little nervous and a little scared inside
Her place was small hardly any room but she said she lived alone
I knew I wasn’t the first man in that place but then I was the one

We sat in the middle of the room and she leaned in for a kiss
That look in her eyes and that faraway place man they were hard to miss
She told me to tie her up and then she started to laugh
I asked her if she was joking and I saw her through the bottom of her glass

If you find yourself standing beside the road thinking what have I done
You look back at the mess you’ve made and whether you gotta run
You sit right down and play with your head and you find out that it’s true
All you can think of and all you can say is what you gonna do
When it’s true… I’ll be leaving you

She sat right here with expecting eyes and she lit another smoke
I sat right there with fear in my heart and I wished was a joke
When I finished she was hardly done and surely told me so
I said now babe we can be friends but it’s really time to go

I looked at her as I started to leave and I saw her full of tears
I wanted to hold her close I wanted her to be near
I left that day I got up and went but never stopped thinking of her
She was such a woman I gotta admit and I’ve never found another
If you find yourself standing beside the road thinking what have I done
You look back at the mess you’ve made and whether you gotta run
You sit right down and play with your head and you find out that it’s true
All you can think of and all you can say is what you gonna do
When it’s true… I’ll be leaving you

I find myself alone these days maybe 15 years gone past
Many women have come and went but I’ve found myself at last
I’ve gotta find my way back to her at least that much is clear
All I can think of is her perfect face and how I left her in tears

I headed out of town with long road ahead and stop to get a drink
And who did I find sitting at that bar my mind could hardly think
That woman from my long lost past she sat there all alone
Her face looked weathered and her clothes weren’t new but she was my own

I went up to her and I said hello mind if I buy you a drink
She just smiled and nodded and I found myself at the brink
She asked me if she knew me from somewhere and I nodded my head
I told her how I left her standing teary eyed and we never went to bed

If you find yourself standing beside the road thinking what have I done
You look back at the mess you’ve made and whether you gotta run
You sit right down and play with your head and you find out that it’s true
All you can think of and all you can say is what you gonna do
When it’s true… I’ll be leaving you

The smile was gone from her face and her eyes they shown with fear
She asked my why I was talking to her and why was I here
I told her that I wanted to find here and I didn’t know where to start
I decided to stop for a drink and I found her in this bar

She looked at me and she shook her head and she started for the door
I called after her and I asked her her name and she got really sore
I told her that I never knew and stayed for another while
I told her that mind was in love and I want to give her a try

She stood there looking at me through the eyes of a girl
I told her that never stopped thinking about her all over this world
And then I told her that I wanted to be hers no matter what it took
I pulled her close and said in her ear lets write another book
I wanna be with you…..

If you find yourself standing beside the road thinking what have I done
You look back at the mess you’ve made and whether you gotta run
You sit right down and play with your head and you find out that it’s true
All you can think of and all you can say is what you gonna do
When it’s true… I’ll be seein’ you

If you find yourself standing beside the road thinking what have I done
You look back at the mess you’ve made and whether you gotta run
You sit right down and play with your head and you find out that it’s true
All you can think of and all you can say is what you gonna do
When it’s true… I’ll be seein’ you

The Weaver Gets His Name.

2005-11-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

This here’s the story about Lou the Weaver. Lou the Weaver was perhaps the most ridiculous chapter in my life. Lou the Weaver, or the Weaver as I’ll call him from now on was the first relationship my mother got into after her and my father split up.

The Weaver was a classic piece of work only people like my mother find. I think she set out to find the lowest form of a person. I mean he was just the most lackluster person I think I’ve ever met. He was nondescript in almost every way. He drove a Ford Pinto station wagon with that fake wood panel on the side. His employment was something at the local newspaper. He worked with harness racing horses, but even with that he only fed the horses and took them out for occasional exercise.

The only thing that set him apart was the behavior that earned his moniker. Well that wasn’t the only thing but we’ll get to that later. The Weaver liked to grill. Actually he liked to get drunk and then grill. He’d come home from work, pound like 14 beers in the first hour, really it was normally about 5, and then hit the BBQ.

He’d stand there drinking beer and burning meat. You would think the Weaver had it made right? He’s living every man’s dream. He’s got a woman who will give him some action any time, at any moment. He’s got beer and he’s got his grill. But this is where the fun really starts. The Weaver would not admit he was a drunk. He would just stand there throwing up flames on his BBQ and weave back and forth. He liked boxing so it was like he was bobbing and weaving to avoid the flames but really he was just drunk. He’d stand there, spatula in hand and drunk off his ass and stare down into the hot blackness of his grill. Sometimes he’d drop some meat and swear. Sometimes he’d drop some meat and try to hide it. Every time he’d weave. He did that every night for the entire summer we lived with him. Drink, burn meat, weave, what a tradition. Thus, in my mind, the Weaver was born.

Of course a few problems existed with the Weaver. For instance, before we moved in with him and early on in the relationship, the Weaver actually told my mother that he didn’t like kids. Yep that’s what he said. He said, “Kathy I don’t like kids.” What did my mom do? She slept with him. Then she decided to move in with him. Isn’t that wonderful? That’s like taking your partner to look at a house because you guys are in the market. Well your partner says, “I don’t like this house.” And you put an offer in on it anyway. The offer gets accepted and when your partner isn’t looking you quickly hire movers and put all your stuff in the house YOUR PARTNER DOESN’T LIKE. Doesn’t that make a lot of sense?

The Weaver was also a nag. He liked to say that I looked like a girl if my hair grew past my collar. We used to visit his drunk, smoker pig mother in Windsor, Ontario. That was a treat because the Weaver was also a bigot. Border crossing between Windsor and Detroit was always pretty swell because at US Customs many of the Customs officers were African American. Well apparently getting asked questions by a, and yes I quote, “stupid nigger,” just didn’t sit too well with the Weaver. Every time we’d get close to the border my mom would panic and smoke an extra pack of cigarettes. I would have a spontaneous, smoke induced asthma attack in the back seat and the Weaver would start to bitch about how many blacks there were in Detroit. I was awash in positive role models. Nothing got better when we arrived at Weaver’s mother’s place. She was too pathetic to move. She smoked more cigarettes than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life and these were the Canadian kind. Just like the beer she drank she took a harsh stance against American cigarettes. They are too weak, she’d say. You can’t feel them when you inhale and they taste like nothing. It was about this time I’d whip out my inhaler and run into the next room.

The truly sad thing about these situations is that I was only 12. I didn’t have a lot to say about what happened to me. Whenever I would bring up the ridiculousness of the situations to my, I-have-open-legs-for-anyone-who-pays-attention-to-me, mother she would ignore me. She wouldn’t respond. I can still see her staring of into space when I’d ask these questions. Maybe she was plotting her next drunk. Maybe she was too proud to face the fact that she was truly pathetic. Maybe she just liked being an idiot. All I know is that I grew up this way and I’m not that happy about it.

I guess that’s the point of all I write. I’m not happy about a lot of things. I want to share my stories and I hope in doing so I’ll reach someone and make them think before they do something stupid. Maybe someone will meet their own Lou the Weaver and turn around and run for the hills. Maybe, just maybe, someone will think of their kids before their carnal needs and do what’s best for their children.

I Wait Another Week

2005-11-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

OK.. so I know that I said I would probably have something up this week, but I was wrong. I will not post another blog until I get some columns sent out. I have 2 columns edited. I also have 2 addresses of where to send my columns, so I'll have that done later this week.

I just recently joined the ranks of the temporarily gainfully employed, so that's taking up quite a bit of time too. Just keep your shirts on and I gaurantee I'll have a new one up next week.

until then... be good

Hmmmm.. what's going on?

2005-11-02T08:11:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone. How are you? Well I must say that I been a little busy with stuff like Halloween, convincing myself that it's a good time to start soliciting publications to actually publish this puppy and a myriad of other things on my plate. Since I don't get paid a damn thing to do this column yet, yes I said yet, it frequently gets pushed to the back burner. I'm OK with that and I hope you are too.

Well Today I plan to get two samples ready to send out to a few publications in Canada and the US. I'm excited. It's a big step, but I'm ready to take it. Also, I might get another column up later today. I've already started one so I should probably just finish it.

Until then... have a swell day.

The Real Married Man

Change Needs Understanding

2005-10-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

There is this helpless spot in everyone’s life. I have it. You have it. We all have it. It’s that part of life where you decide what you are going to do and it drives you. You are a hapless, helpless schmuck who wonders what the hell is going to happen next.

This very instant of helplessness is what sets people apart and is the subject of this week’s column. I see this instant as pivotal for every person. There are two ways to deal with this instant, which is entirely affected by your personal belief system. The way you deal with this instant, and this instant happens over and over by the way, depends on how you see life and what you internalize as you progress through existence. The two options in this case are simply to take action in the form of new behaviors and personal experiments or continue with what you always do and essentially change nothing. If you change nothing you still possess the knowledge that you just passed up the opportunity to change but didn’t.

Actually the subject of this week’s column is a person’s personal belief system and how it affects their actions in life. I see people’s actions in a positive/negative way, black and white, yes or no. I say this because the act of changing your life or situation is one thing, which can subsequently be comprised of many little things. I realize this gets rather ethereal but it’s just how it is. The overall effect is simple. You either do or you don’t and that’s huge in a person’s life. You either change or you don’t.

The problem comes from a person’s ability to make change and whether they choose a new course of action. I maintain that change can only become possible when a person understands what they are doing at a deeply personal level. Take this for example, what makes fat people lose weight? I mean there are tons of stories of people who were huge who lost weight and there are tons of huge people who continue to either grow or just stay huge. Both these types of people know that obesity is an enormous problem (pun partially intended). Yet what makes one person change and the other not. I think this comes down to personal understanding.

What I mean by personal understanding is how deeply you comprehend an idea. You can simply know something or deeply understand it. Here is another example. Everyone knows that everyone has to die. Everyone knows that it will hurt emotionally when someone very close to you dies. Yet the person who has never experienced that does not understand that concept nearly as deeply as a person who has lost someone very close to them. This understanding consistently affects the outcomes of our lives and our actions. In order to make personal change you must understand things at a deeply personal level. Take the weight loss example again. Some people lose weight when they have a heart attack or become diabetic. Their lives are changed whether or not they chose to acknowledge it. Their understanding has become more personal because their environment has forced understanding upon them. Yet some people, despite this greater understanding refuse to change.

I talked with my mother, the drunk, a couple of weeks ago and she told me that at 57 she finally gets that she doesn’t have to be the way she is anymore. She no longer has to put up with the bullshit of her life and she needn’t be what others think she is. She can choose to be a drunk or not. She can choose career success or further downward spiral into financial failure. This realization is the pivotal point. Her understanding is now deeper than it ever has been before when she was busy crapping on my existence with her drunken nude scenes and obsessive behavior. Before she always knew on the surface that she didn’t have to get drunk and act poorly. She knew that she didn’t have to sleep with men who were abusive. She never acquired the level of understanding she needed to change. Apparently now she has. I won’t hold my breath but I do believe she does understand this concept on a level new to her. With this new understanding comes new perception and this perception makes old behaviors kind of pointless. It’s like our life works in a linear and circular fashion at the same time. We get older in a linear fashion and yet can do the same things over and over in an endless circle no matter how destructive. In order to move forward we must become linear again and start trying new things. It’s like you start walking down a path instead of just standing there doing circles. If you have a goal you must get there, and to get to that goal you have to understand deeply how important it is to get there.

I’m not sure if this column is exactly fair. I tried to encapsulate an idea in 1000 words what some people would take an entire book to do. I’ll boil it down to this. We all reach these helpless points in our lives where we don’t know what’s ahead and are not completely sure what to do. We either move forward in an attempt to reach our goals or we stay in the same place. Our decisions whether or not to change come from our understanding and how deeply we understand ourselves, and the issues at hand. Until we can look at our true selves and our true situations and see life on its deeply personal level nothing really changes. We stay the same. Nothing will become real for us and we remain circular beings.

I’ve spent the last 6 years expanding my understanding of life in order to change. I realized that I had to own all my gifts and faults in addition to my circumstances. Then I had to decide what I wanted from life and decide whether or not it was worth it to try to go after what I want. Personally I’m scared but I try ever day to move further along my path because I understand what’s at stake and I don’t want to move in circles ever again.

As always, thanks for reading to the end. Talk to you next week.

I Now Need A Break

2005-10-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

After the last couple of weeks I'm going to take this week off. See you next week.

There Comes a Time When You Need Someone

2005-10-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life takes an interesting turn. Sometimes it feels like the turns life takes are far from desirable. It decides where you go and you don’t have a whole lot to say. You only decide how you act. I guess that’s what makes it interesting.

I sit here in Hamilton, Ontario. Two days ago, Sunday, I had no idea I would be here until we received a phone call from my wife’s sister. My father in law went into the hospital and the family wanted my wife to get to Vancouver as soon as she could. My wife’s father finally died yesterday morning. We got her and our daughter to Toronto and on a flight to Vancouver as fast as we could. Yet we were too late it seems. Around 7:00 a.m. Monday morning my father in law left this world for the next. My wife missed the chance to see her father one last time with the light of life in his eyes. She was probably in at the Winnipeg Airport when it happened.

She called me and cried a little. My daughter was not allowed to see her grandfather’s lifeless body. I’m not sure how I feel about this but in the end it wasn’t my decision to make. I listened on the phone from over 2000 miles away and felt lost at heart. There is nothing in the world I could have said. When she told me they didn’t make it what was there to say? Nothing, you just shut up and listen. Listen with all your heart and hope the person at the other end of the line can feel you listening.

My wife told me the wake will be held this Saturday and that her and my daughter will stay until then and come back the next day. For some reason I feel like this is home. I’m not sure why. I guess Canada means something to me now. Canada to me has accepted me more than any other place I’ve been.

You see there is a funny thing about this place. I met my wife’s family in this country and although I don’t like Vancouver all that much and think the people there are a bunch of posers, I still felt more like a person there than anywhere else. My father in law was a big part of that. I remember just getting together with him to watch the Grey Cup, the Canadian version of the Super Bowl.

I remember how that man took care of our daughter and did what he could in his own special way to help me get my shit together when I needed it most. Just like my wife he was there for me in his own unique way. I’ve never actually had someone do that for me. When I think of it now I could really care less if my actual parents die. My loser-drunk mom will never really change. She still calls me drunk sometimes and it doesn’t really matter. I either have her in my life and live out this boring, useless drama or I don’t. I’ve lived without talking to her for years but that actually takes effort more effort than it’s worth. My father has been busy making sure his gonads were taken care of before me for a long time. After he fucked my aunt in the sleeper of a semi at an oil well when I was seven my life changed unalterably with no input from me. He is married now and I’m pretty sure I’m not even mentioned in his will. It happens I guess, but it didn’t happen when I went to Canada.

My father in law didn’t do that to me. He didn’t do that kind of thing to us, not at all. All he did was try to help; and he did that because he cared. I’d never met someone like that. Now that he has passed I rather find myself surrounded with such people.

I’m here in Ontario staying with people I barely know. One person is a friend that I met online about 8 years ago. Sometimes we go a year without talking to one another. I’ve only met her in person 3 times including now. I’ve never met her family before. Yet her father let me stay here for 6 nights in Hamilton so I don’t have to make the 500 mile round trip to pick my wife and daughter up on Sunday in Toronto. My friend’s sister has welcomed me and went grocery shopping with me this morning. We made dinner together. Everyone has done nothing but help me and offer their home to me and let me enter into their lives on almost no notice.

I can’t wait to get back to Canada and live here.

No matter what I think, my father in law finds his body on the way to the crematorium and will soon take its final form on this planet. His ashes will spread on his parent’s graves and the rest will get cast into the water. I miss the man already. I miss all the little things that he did. I miss the phone calls and I miss him as a friend.

As always, thanks for reading to the end. Talk to you next week.

The Guest Room is Not My Room

2005-10-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

This week I thought a little more family history was in order. I had to think pretty hard to come up with something out of my past. Actually nothing is further from the truth. There are plenty of things to write about from my past. I just needed to pick one.

Now it’s time to tackle my father. He was an interesting man prone to extramarital affairs, at least when I was around. I guess one vagina just wasn’t enough. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that my mother lacked the ability to accommodate him. She had no self esteem and was pretty willing to sell her soul to anything. I remember the day she appropriately told me that my father came home and thought they ought to check out the local swinger scene.

We lived in a pretty small town; I’m talking around 12,000 people. The local swinger scene meant they pretty much banged their friends.

My mother, of course, couldn’t handle what she agreed to. My father did what every man in the 70s did in his situation. He nailed everyone he could. Apparently that included a couple men too.

There was this one day when I was asked as a seven year old child to not sleep in my room. If my recollection is accurate, it was so “guests” could sleep in my bed. Well the only guest there was this guy who creeped me out in a big way. It’s funny how I have no idea now what he looks like, but I can remember what he felt like. Well there I was in the “guest” room, which is where the “guests” normally slept. It was late at night. My parents had Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon blaring in the living room. I couldn’t sleep and they insisted that I have my door closed. This was new too. Usually I slept with the door wide open.

Here is a word to parents. Children at seven years of age are pretty smart. They can tell when something’s up. I could tell something was up. I felt sick to my stomach. I tried to sleep for some time and couldn’t. The music was too loud and I could hear occasional grunts from the living room. We lived in a 40 foot long modular home, so the living room was a thin wall away from the “guest” room. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and opened the door and everything was dark. I thought this was strange because when “guests” were over the lights were usually on. I had to call out a few times before one of my parents answered. It was my dad. He came to the door and he was naked.

This was a new development for me, especially since I was a little boy who loved to hang out in my underwear and run around naked. Whenever company came over I was ushered into my room to put on some clothes. When my dad answered the door in his birthday suit, my stomach dropped a little lower.

I asked him why he was naked. I don’t remember his exact response but it was a sad excuse for an explanation. He mentioned something about some drinks and music. I asked him where our “guest” was and he said he was out in the living room. Since that’s where my father had just come from I was seriously disturbed. My father tried to console me while it was obvious he clearly wanted to get back to what he was doing.

I honestly cannot say whether my mother was out there involved in this transaction of drunken bodily fluid exchange. My intuition tells me that she wasn’t, that she had gone to bed and probably felt about the same way I did. Heck maybe she left for the night. All I know is that I never saw that guy again.

After that my mother continued to sink into drunken stardom. We were shunned more and more by our neighbors. The lady who ritually beat her son next door moved out and the yard became a mess. My father never provided an adequate explanation about that night. I know now what was going on. It’s unfortunate my parents suffered such lack of judgment. My behavior turned more and more toward a child acting out. My parents smoked more and my asthma got worse. I think the worse thing of all was that I no longer felt safe. I didn’t feel like my parents would protect me.

It wasn’t a cognitive realization but I felt it all the same. To me this is the worse kind of abscess a parent can allow. I know people who were sexually abused as children and beaten but it comes down to the same thing. They weren’t truly taken care of and were left to take care of themselves in a lot of ways. I think this is a shame.

There isn’t really a whole lot more to say on this other than my life since then has been one shakedown after another. I’ve had to learn how to grow up on my own. I’m still learning. I’m happy to do it, but some help before my 29th birthday would have been nice. I thank my wife for the patience to stick with me as I grow up. The last six and half years haven’t always been easy, but they were worth it.

As always thanks for reading to the end. Until next week, enjoy life to its fullest and cherish someone every day. It really makes life worth living and there’s no substitute for when you feel really great about someone.

Death Comes From the Heart

2005-09-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

Death… the final frontier. A true Star Trekian would get the reference of what I just said but it really is the final frontier. No matter what you believe, the end of your life on this planet is transcendence beyond anything you’ve ever known.

A week and a half ago I saw death as a walking, cane using, face and emerged changed. Perspective is interesting and is about the only thing we have: we as people I mean. My perspective comes from how I act, view and interact with the world. It’s what I think as I process information from my environment. I tend to be an extreme pessimist. That’s my perspective. I expect the worst from people and sometimes get it. I reason that if I aim low my expectations are easily exceeded.

How does this have anything to do with death you ask? From my perspective, it has everything to do with it. Death must be experienced by every living thing on this planet. No matter how much you’ve prayed or fucked your neighbor’s wife you still gotta die. The Grim Reaper doesn’t shy away from people with billions of dollars more than the skid row wino begging for pennies on the street corner. Death is more pervasive than taxes. If that’s not something to ponder, I don’t know what is.

A week and a half ago I was in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada. I went with my family to see my father-in-law one last time in this life. He has lost a battle, if you can call it that, with cancer. Lymphoma is destroying his lymph system and other systems along the way. His liver throws a daily welcome party for cancer and threatens an inevitable shutdown. His legs are swollen to the point where he no longer walks. A wheelchair and a recliner became his pals and he just bought a large screen plasma television he’s coveted for quite some time to enjoy in his last weeks of life. That’s legacy for ya.

I looked at the man. Veins showed through under the skin on his head. The man I grew to know was no longer there. His voice was different. His spirit was that of a dieing man who suffered the disappointment of realizing that he can’t just party himself to death like he planned to a year ago after he was diagnosed.

Our final evening in the burb included a gourmet lobster dinner with fresh lobster shipped in from Halifax, Canada. It’s on the east coast of the country for all you geographically challenged folks out there. Quick tell me the capital of Ontario. Where is Ontario you ask? Look on a fucking map and while you’re there, make sure you know where Vancouver and Halifax are.

My sister-in-law came with her doctor husband and brought the little red beauties. She plopped them in the boiler and everyone ate up. The children were grumpy. The man of the hour couldn’t really eat much and it was time for us to go.

My wife, in her beauty, went to sit with her father. I looked on as she did that for the last time. I wish I could say that I was touched or moved by the scene but it really goes much beyond those simple terms. It changed me. I don’t feel different. I just am. My sister-in-law went to sit with my wife and they cried together with their father on the couch. I sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks and the man of the hour joined them. For a few minutes people were silent except for the muffled sobs emerging from my sister-in-law. Her doctor husband didn’t cry. He just looked down as if he wanted to act in a manner appropriate for the situation. This bedside manner obviously gained from spending many brutal hours in med school, served him well as he assumed a pose demur. My brother-in-law, my wife’s brother, couldn’t really look at anyone. He looked down and when he did look up he reminded me of a 40 year old little boy.

We soon left and began our drive to Seattle for our flight back. When we got to the border the customs officer asked us the purpose of our trip.

“To see her dieing father,” I said without looking at the man. That was the first time I ever got anything close to respect from a US customs officer. Maybe it was the first time I paid attention, but I noticed. He said he was sorry and then flagged us to go inside to take care of some issue, which was completely legitimate.

A half hour later we stopped in Bellingham at the natural food store and stocked up on sugar for the trip home. I wandered through the place in a daze. I didn’t really care what happened or what people thought. I’m pretty sure I scowled at a lesbian while she checked out the yogurt.

The trip back was sleepless. It sucked but managed to echo our mood. My child realized she would never see grandpa again that day.

I am now different than I was 2 weeks ago. I’m not completely sure how and I’m not sure if it’s important but I am. Some things don’t matter as much as they did. I’ve become more committed to things than I was before. It’s time for me to move on with life and be ready to face death when it comes. I have no wish for how I die other than I hope it’s not from cancer. Cancer is the most humiliating way someone can die. It’s awful. It’s like you are punished by constantly having to watch your wife brutally raped in front of you while you do nothing because you are too weak.

I’m different now. I plan to be ready when my time comes. Make sure you are ready too. It’s important. It’s something we all go through, so deal with it.

As always, thanks for reading to the end. I’ll try to not space my columns off anymore. Talk to you next week.

Greatness Stays

2005-09-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

Here we are. It’s a simple statement but it seriously embraces the truth. Here we are. What are we going to do about it? I ponder that frequently. For me, figuring out what I’m going to do seems a lot more difficult than a lot of people I know. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but I do know that it relates directly to the choices I’ve made and the people I’ve decided to give my allegiance.

While I watched TV this week I heard Gene Hackman talk about greatness. He played the part of a football coach and it was one of those inspiring moments that sports movies bring out like only sport movies can. It’s truly inspiring how inspiring a sports movie can be. Anyway, ole Gene said something about greatness and how greatness no matter how small stays with a man. I was inspired.

The truth of what he talked about, or what some writer decided to make him talk about, was the choices people make. I realize this sounds like shite, but it’s true. Everything bases itself on a series of events we as people put ourselves through. Think about it like this. Different opportunities present themselves in different circumstances for different people. This can be as simple as taking a new way home from work. It’s new and offers another set of possibilities from what you are used to. Even if you take the same way home from work every day, each day presents a different scenario where you need to react, make decisions and live with the decisions of other people, animals and natural elements. And ole Gene decided to talk about greatness. Here is where it gets good.

You see greatness is a decision. It’s not something that just happens to you. Think of all the trust fund babies who grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth. Did they have to do anything great to get what they were born into? No, not really. All they had to do was get born, which is a great thing, but it’s not anything that everyone else hasn’t done. Someone else did great things before them and they get to reap the benefits. But they have the choice to do something great or live their lives in mundane comfort and never challenge themselves to anything.

Now greatness, there’s something to sneeze at. Greatness, what does it mean? Personally I think everyone makes their own definition. What’s great to someone is piss to someone else. It’s like that with everything. Greatness does not have to be big, just great. I think sometimes getting the heck out of bed is pretty great. Greatness is also big. Einstein was great. Nelson Mandela was great. This people were great in a big way.

But greatness… think about it. Greatness sticks with a man. Think about that. I do all the time and I know what it means. For me it means the ability to look at things for what they truly are and move beyond the useless things in life and focus on what needs to happen. This is great for me. I’m 35 and I just figured this out. There is so much bullshit in the world but nothing stops me from being great. All I have to do is decide to be great, do something about it then repeat. Pretty soon I’ll do great things all the time, because, as Gene said, greatness sticks with a man.

My daughter is great. She took her first steps at eight months, potty trained, on her own, before she was two and positively affects people wherever she goes, and I’m her daddy. She sticks with me and I take care of her and help keep her safe. My wife, her mom, stays with our daughter too. Our daughter shares her greatness, grace and beauty with us every single day a million times and we love her. That’s great. You see, I already decided to do great things. I’m not sure I knew it. Now I know and I’ll keep on doing them until the day I die simply because it’s my choice.

Greatness, it’s the choice we all have. Do you want to make that choice? It’s not hard. All you have to do is make up your mind and got for it.

Thanks for reading to the end. Talk to you next week.

The Real Married Man.

The Real Married Man Ponders a New Meaning To an Old Tune

2005-09-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well here I am back again after a couple of weeks and a move. I’m sure all six of my avid readers have had their faces glued to their computers in anticipation. Alas here I am again ready to type this week’s emotional and mental adventure.

On the way to the toilet just a few minutes ago a thought pierced my head like an arrow. How many roads must a man walk down before he becomes an asshole? I realize this is a bit of a bastardization of a perfectly good Bob Dylan tune but life is pretty much a bastardization of a Bob Dylan tune if you really think about it. The funny thing is that I immediately came up with an answer. That answer, in my case anyway, if you take an antihistamine and couple that with and asthma stimulant is pretty fucking quick. I’m talking really quick.

I’m one of those guys who doesn’t do well with caffeine either. I get angry whenever I ingest some. The odd time I’m ok and I can usually handle it if I’m ready and know what I’m doing, but sometimes it gets the better of me. Suddenly I turn into this green eyed monster fatman with a bitch streak a mile wide and hair on its back. That’s how I feel right now. Ad to that the fact that my lungs actually hurt from inflammation; I’m a pretty peachy character. My wife just told me to talk to the hand after one of my bitchy spells. I laughed but she’s right.

This takes me to a realization that I had earlier in the day. Ever since I was eight years old I’ve been on some stimulant or another for asthma. I was only relieved of this in my early twenties when my allergies went largely into remission. It seems they are coming back the last couple of years and I’ve had to take something for them. However, as I child I was always jacked on something. My hands always shook from the medication and I would have huge mood swings but my asthma attacks stopped mostly.

It was a trade off, a catch-22. I lived in a paradox where I had to endure something horrible for something good and the good outweighed the terrible. I grew to resent these feelings that accompanied my drugs. To this day I believe that’s why I get so angry, other than my putting something in my body that doesn’t belong that’s the only thing that makes sense.

The truly sad thing about all this is my role model of a mother smoked like a chimney through all this. She still does. Every Christmas was sitting around the tree in a haze. It was like smoke up Kath while your son slowly dies in the corner. Even now I have a reduced lung capacity. A normal man my size should have a 6 liter capacity, mine’s only 5. Now that really sucks if you ask me. That means that somewhere somehow 1/6 of my lungs and lung tissue has been destroyed. They burned up now just fill the space as scare tissue.

Smoke the fuck up Kath. Why don’t you have another drink while you’re at it? Yes this has degraded into a typical bitch session where I just rag on my mother and her choices and she has no recourse where she can defend herself. In my defense though I told her about what I wrote and she couldn’t handle it and told me that she was tired of hearing about what an awful person she was. I can respect that but it still doesn’t change the situations I was put in without any real control over my environment. I asked her to quit over and over. We got rid of everything else I was allergic to, but not that. And that my friends I think was the real problem all along.

The unfortunate thing is this is true and a lot of parents make decisions at the sacrifice of their children. People just think they will grow up alright, which is mostly true. I think maybe if you give someone the best shot possible maybe they’ll turn out a lot better than alright. They won’t spend their lives dealing; instead they’ll spend their time focusing.

Yes this got preachy, but it’s the truth from my perspective and I can only write what I think.

As always thanks for reading to the end and I’ll talk to you next week. The column will resume its regular course of Tuesday morning publication unless something gets in the way.

This Is A Time Of Need

2005-08-17T18:16:00.000-07:00

Well I just wanted to let people who read this know that I will be away for a couple of weeks because of projects and getting ready to move. I have to do other things. See you on Sept 6!!!

Don't Throw Me Over

2005-08-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

I stood at the top of a waterfall. I looked down. I could see rocks and below. I did not want to fall. If I did, I was pretty sure it would hurt. I was pretty sure I would die. The waterfall was at least 50 feet high. I was a little scared.

Here begins a tale of when I was 14. A part of my family decided a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was a great idea. My mother and I went with her boyfriend at the time, she had quite a few boyfriends at the time, and his niece. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or UP, is a pretty rugged area. It’s surprisingly unpopulated and is surprisingly beautiful, especially in the fall when all the trees change colors. People say how great New England is in the fall and I think it’s only because they haven’t been to the UP.

Anyway, my mom’s boyfriend, John the dumbass, knew the area up there pretty well. He grew up in the UP. It showed, honestly. He was… well… a dumbass. I didn’t raise the guy, but I met the people who did and they were… well… dumbasses too. His old man was the kind of militant fuck who terrorized his children with grandiose threats he was more than happy to carry out. I remember stories from John the dumbass about getting a fork in the arm if he didn’t wipe his face or if he accidentally put his elbows on the dinner table. I often listened to tales of public ridicule poor John the dumbass suffered when his father was in a foul mood. John the dumbass’s mother however was a peach. She was one of those peaches you pick up and find it maggot infested and smelling of putrescence, but with an attitude of superior peach arrogance like it’s the best fruit on the planet. She was a bitch of the worst and most manipulative kind. My mother, who was constantly up for an award for the person with the lowest self esteem in Grand Traverse County, was deeply distraught one day when the peach-bitch told her she didn’t like her. My mom spent the next week trying to figure out how to patch things up and the peach-bitch just smirked those maggot teeth while John the dumbass tried to console my low self esteem mother to no avail.

Now you’ve got a pretty good idea of life with John the dumbass. Actually you’ve got a pretty good idea of what all my mom’s boyfriends were like but that’s not the point of this particular column. But trust me I will get to that one day indeed and when I start making money off this sucker I’ll cut my mom in on some cash for giving me such a storied past to write about.

Well like I said there I was standing at the top of that waterfall but I neglected to mention that the dumbass’s niece, Tori, was standing there with me. Now Tori was a dipshit. I say this because she just didn’t do things that were all that well thought out, and she did them a lot. It was painful and hilarious to be around her at the same time. She was nice enough and meant well. Plus she was academically smart, so that helped. However, on top of a 50 foot waterfall with deadly rocks staring up from below is not your favorite place when the person next to you lacks essential logical abilities. The absent abilities I refer are these; a rushing current on the precipice of a cliff is not a good place to stand. Also the rocks can get slippery, another detail left unconsidered by our female heroine. Lastly, it was a little windy that day. Wind, coupled with rushing current and slippery rocks pretty much sucks on top of a waterfall. You may find yourself suddenly in a precarious position.
Guess where Tori was. Yep. She walked right out into the river to get a better look over, yes I said over, the waterfall. I stood next to her on a little patch of dry land with a waist high weed as my only friend. Dipshit took her time galavanting around in the stream when a gust of wind came along and knocked her off balance and she slipped on a rock. Guess what dipshit did next. She grabbed me and pushed me forward to counterbalance her. I was just as close to the edge as she was but I wasn’t stupid enough to stand in the water. I did what any self respecting person would do. I grabbed my friend the weed. I grabbed it with both hands. I grabbed it so hard and pulled that I yanked it from its perch, but it was enough to stabilize me, which in turn stabilized Tori. I gave Tori a scathing look and she had the audacity to ask me what was wrong. I spat at my feet and laid my friend the weed gently down on the ground next to the river.

All ended well that day as I’m sure you can see. I am here to tell this tale. I only saw Tori one more time in my life and John the dumbass is, thankfully, a distant memory, but that moment atop the waterfall remains vivid in my mind.

As always thanks for reading to the end. Until next time have a great week!

The Coffee Shop Sparks a Revelation

2005-08-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

Today I sat in a coffee shop. My wife and daughter were there. We sat on top of a couple of big cushy chairs when my daughter asked if the man next to her was a guy.

The reason she did this was because, of course, he had long hair. I was embarrassed and upset. I told her that indeed he was and she proceeded to ask why he had long hair. I told her for the same reason I had long hair about 15 years ago, because I liked it. That seemed to sate her well enough and she started to play a roaring game of “I Spy” with her mother. I sat there and hoped the man with the incriminating hair would not look at me.

I couldn’t tell if he did or not but the man sitting next to me was an older fella with a pony tail. He had dyed it brown to stave off the nasty impedance of gray that people over 20 start to freak out about when they notice it on their heads. This guy was well beyond 20. I would imagine in his 60s and he turned to me and asked how old my daughter was.

“Three,” I said.

“Isn’t she kind of big for that age,” he said, “especially for a girl?” I told him that indeed she was tall for her age and that she recently played with a five year old who was only about 3 inches taller than my daughter. The man nodded a knowing nod. You know, one of those nods that confide wisdom and a life spent in observance of the world around. I was glad for that nod. It meant we were on the same page.

“They grow up fast at that age,” he said. I said, “yeah.”

“They learn everything too,” he said. I said, “yeah everything.” And by everything I was talking about a life where my daughter will end up blitzed by sex, drugs, and billboards telling her how she will look and of course those little caddy bitches that run around in groups she will call friends. Instantly my future flashed and my ideals were challenged.

“There isn’t a whole lot you can do either,” he said. I thought about this and agreed. This time I nodded at him. Only I didn’t nod one of those wise nods. I nodded one of those, “holy fucking shit nods.” I felt the helplessness a father feels when he realizes that his child will indeed grow up and will get to face all the badness out there.

I’m sorry. I’m not exactly an optimist. This doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of happiness. It simply means that I tend to look at what’s wrong with the situation more than what’s good. My wife calls this complaining. I tend to agree with her.

I digress.

The man and I continued to talk for a bit and the conversation turned toward divorce and how destructive the whole process can be, especially if there are children involved. He told me about a man that worked for him who was involved with a woman who just left him. The man then went to see the woman and found another man coming out of her new place and well we just left it at that. This couple had a child and we agreed it was sad. It was sad that the child will now grow up in a broken family. No matter what happens and how cool a step parent the child may end up with, that child will always know that something is inherently wrong with the picture.

“How many friends do you know are divorced,” he asked. I replied, “I’m one of them.” I got another nod. This time he pursed his lip and furrowed his brow in thought. It was still a wise look.

This got me thinking about the situation we live in. It’s a place where people don’t take themselves seriously and when they do they focus on bizarre stuff to make themselves different. I’m working through this as a write so bear with me. It would be easy to get lofty here and talk about what a shitty place the world is but I don’t really believe that. I mean there is a lot wrong, and I mean a lot. Many great things exist too. Ultimately I started to consider people and how they approach their relationships.

What I came to was this: simply people just don’t take their relationships seriously enough. I know people who got married with the caveat in mind that if things don’t work out they can always get a divorce. I know because I’m one of them. Thankfully things are different now for me and I’m confident I can work through anything with my partner, but I don’t think most people take this perspective. It’s the real feeling that when you are down, shit on and feeling bad that someone will be there. They may not be too happy about being there but they are there all the same and they help you up. As they help you up they learn about themselves as well. It’s this cyclical process that relationships that work go through periodically and make relationships that are a sham fall apart.

This process I call building. It’s like a house. You start with a foundation and if you want it to last you make sure it’s strong. Then you ad whatever you ad until the entire house is complete. Obviously I’m not a carpenter. The point is that you have to build a house and you get out of the house what you put into it. If you put shit into it, well your life in your house basically sucks. If you put your love, care, attention to detail, compassion and trust into it and use only quality material and builders, then you end up with something great. This great thing still needs maintenance to stay great. It still needs work to help it along and it will fall apart if you don’t do the right things with it and it will suffer if you put shitty material into it later on. This mirrors relationships perfectly.

That’s when I got it. I knew my daughter will grow up and become her own woman. She will face life with her own eyes. The good thing is that I’ll be there with her mom to help build that foundation. I’ll work to help her through stuff when she’s having a rough time. I’ll pick her up. I’ll always have a shoulder and I’ll always love her. This made me feel pretty good. Suddenly I, the pessimist, looked through the optimist’s eyes. At least I have nothing to complain about.

As always, thanks for reading to the end. Have a great week.

Confidence Leads to Relationships

2005-07-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve begun to ponder a rather strange concept. It concerns the idea that there are a tremendous amount of people on the planet. Out of this mass of humanity there exists only one perfect mate for each and every one of us. Does that make sense to you? Is this a little confusing? I think it is, only because of the shear multitude of people calling this rock home. I mean people are everywhere. If you are confused on this subject, all you have to do is spend a couple of hours anywhere near New York City and trust me you’ll be convinced. Out of this confusion of people we are supposed to search the planet and find that one true love.

My point is the likelihood of actually meeting that one special other person in the world is extremely low. It’s so low in fact that the narrow possibility of this wild prophecy coming true is beyond me. I remember as I grew up people told me I will meet the right “one” for me and everything will work out great. This is bullshit. I mean come on, if this idea really holds true then how come people don’t search the world over for their “only one” and always end up with people they live close to or who are from their home town, or they work with or… ? You get the idea. My point is that most people don’t go to great lengths to find their mates. Wouldn’t that one person more likely be on another continent; and wouldn’t that person probably speak another language?

This can’t be true. Tons of great matches exist in the world. People have to realize this and make a decision to make a match work. This of course shatters the belief system of at least 1/3 of the planet, I’m sure, but love and relationships are a series of decisions that we, who are in relationships, decide to act out. It’s not some magical blessing; it’s commitment and honor. With that honor you create your own world and live in it according to the rules of your relationship.

This leads me to the next part. The rules of your relationship are whatever you decide they are. I know people who spend all their time trying to nail people other than their partner and their partner is the same way. These people swing more than children at a playground and yet they have perfectly productive, even loving, relationships. I even know a couple who swung with another couple on their wedding night. It’s a little creepy for me but hey, it really does work for them. They have enough confidence in themselves and their relationship to do whatever they feel is appropriate.

There is this guy who lives next to me right now. He decided to take an opportunity to work in another state away from his wife. They see each other a lot on the weekends, but he has confidence in her and she has in him. When I met them both I could just tell, and they are both great people.

Finally this brings me to the real basis of everything: confidence. Confidence to me is the one thing that can make or break any situation. Confidence is the foundation, the cornerstone of everything that happens in our world. How do you think Donald Trump got to the position he is in life after he lost all of his money in the 90s? It’s because he was confident he could do it. When you look at all those people who have great relationships what do you see? You see a quiet confidence between the two of them. Each person is confident of themselves and they believe in their relationship. Confidence can bring walls down and build mountains. Confidence is the most attractive thing you can offer the opposite sex. And if they aren’t in to confidence then you don’t really want to be with them, because that means the person isn’t into respect.

I think I’ve made my point so I’ll leave it there. The only other thing I can say is that confidence is available to everyone. All you have to do is make a decision to live your life with it and work at it.

Well that’s all for this week’s column. I just want to send a shout out to my buddy George Fredericks. My recent discussions with him helped me come up with this week’s topic. As always, have a great week and thanks for reading to the end.

He Becomes a Man

2005-07-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I think it’s time to ramp things up a bit. I’m not exactly sure what that means but I plan to figure it out as I go along. It should be fun. Let’s get started.

Today I sit here in my underwear doing my weekly writing. My daughter eats her breakfast and I ponder life in accordance with my belief system. All that means is that I woke up where I live and now have to deal with all the things I face on a day to day basis. None of this is too riveting if you ask me, it does however afford me the opportunity to look at some pretty interesting things.

A few days ago I received my previous farewell column from when I wrote for the University newspaper. I was surprised to see a couple of things. The first thing I noticed was that I had significantly more hair at that time, which is always startling. The second was how I am basically in a different place. At that time I was in the midst of truly facing life for the first time. My ex-wife was threatening me whenever she could and I was trying to decide what I wanted out of life.

I guess that’s a good thing to talk about. You see I believe that every person goes through a period where they decide to grow up or not. In my case I call it deciding to become a man. The funny thing is that I never did this until just recently. I was busy hiding in whatever I could find to hide in. My life existed in a constant paradox of tremendous opportunity and avoidance. In other words I was faced with many chances in life but just couldn’t bring myself doing anything about them. I gained weight, I tried to use sex and I even wanted to drink sometimes. I spent money frivolously. I did anything I could to create a barrier between myself and any measure of success.

About 4 months ago I really looked at what was going on. I had all the skills I needed. The only thing I had to do was decide to use them. I am writing a book that has stayed in relatively the same state for 2 years. I’ve done nothing really to improve my quality of life, that is until 4 months ago. That’s when I decided that I needed to either shit or get off the pot. In my case it means that I had finally decided to become the person that I’ve always wanted to be. I decided to become a man.

Now I realize that a lot of people think that you acquire this certain station in life by simply growing up or by experiencing life as it may and go with the flow and see what happens. I am not one of these people. You see I think becoming a man is a decision. It’s a very important decision. It’s where a guy looks at his life and decides if he wants to end up a schlep or wants to do something that’s meaningful to him. This does not mean that a guy has to become a doctor, engineer, super-pimp or go to the moon. All I’m getting at is that a guy has to decide to do something. Even if you decide to do nothing, that’s still a decision. I mean look at the Buddha… that guy created a whole way of life out of just sitting in one spot until he was “awake”. He gave himself meaning in life by doing essentially nothing. My point is that I think it’s important to “declare” something and then go after it.

What this has meant to me is that I started to exercise, changed my diet, lost 40 lbs since March, gained a new perspective and became motivated to do something. It’s a strange place for me. My wife marvels that I have just made these discoveries because she made them like 10 years ago but I always tell her it’s better late than never. What the future can hold only the future knows. All I know is that now I look forward to it instead of facing it with jaded dread-filled eyes.

Well this ends my third renewed column. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any comments feel free to leave them and I’ll take them into account in future columns. Thanks for reading to the end.

The Real Married Man Ponders His Personal Sexual Evolution

2005-07-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

After going over last week’s column I realized that I missed some rather important items that needs discussion. The first is to tell you my plan, or rather what I’m going to do with this thing I’ve created. I’m going write a weekly column. Second, it’s going to be my take on relationships and how people relate. I know that sounds redundant but each word or phrase, i.e. relationships and how people relate, have different connotations. I think so at least.

This week I thought I would talk about sex. Sex is a good thing to talk about. I like it and I think most people do. The funny thing about sex is that its meaning tends to evolve over time. It has for me. I’m now a 35 year old man. I’m on my second marriage and I still pretty much live for sex. It’s great. I’m not talking about it being great in terms of the whole pizza analogy either. You know where sex is like pizza, even if it’s not that great it’s still pretty good. I’m talking about real sex. Sex you work on. Sex you achieve.

Way back when, when I was like 12 or so I had my first sexual experience. I’m not talking about the time the idiot older boy next door got this bright idea to trap me under the bed and make me suck on his penis when I was only 6. He sucked on mine and told me it tasted like chocolate. He asked me what his tasted like and I said I didn’t really know. All in all it was quite a strange experience. I don’t feel affected by the whole thing. I still love a good blowjob, so that’s still in order. And I can honestly say that I like watching a woman do it, so that pretty much rules out the homosexual tendencies one might hint at from an experience such as the one I just mentioned.

I guess my first sexual experience happened when I was 6. Hmmmmm… Anyway getting back to the 12 year old thing, I had played doctor with girls and we had played around but that’s not what I’m talking about either. I guess I had a lot of sexual experiences before I was 12, but 12 is about the time I started kissing other girls and playing with them and we experienced mutual pleasure for the sake of experiencing mutual pleasure together. It wasn’t some random, "I’ll show you mine if you show me yours", or the inevitable, “hey what’s that you’ve go there” thing kids do when they notice boys have different parts than girls. We didn’t have intercourse or anything like that. We just kissed and touched each other a little bit through our clothes. It was nice. I had a pretty innocent view of sex at that point in time. I’m sure I was sporting some major wood and I’m sure the girl knew of the hardness between my legs but it was wholesome. There was a goodness about just feeling each other for that first time. There was nothing dirty about it.

I still remember the first time I experienced intercourse with a woman. I was 17. I remember the feeling of our naked skin touching. It was electrifying. I thought of sex at that point as this incredibly religious thing. It was something that I just had to have. I had to know what the hell everyone was talking about. So we did it. I will thank my first girlfriend for the rest of my life for the beauty of that first experience. The funny thing was after that sex turned into something different. Even though I was doing it with the same girl, we had already done it. Now I sort of looked upon it as maintenance. Now we just did it together because it was something that felt good.

Next came my later teens and early 20s. I pretty much fucked at that time. I fucked for fuck’s sake. I did it because I was a screaming hormone locomotive cruising down the track and my track was maybe a little too small. I was the test plane doing mach 27 that turned into a ball of fire and crashed to the earth. Basically I spent my time wishing I was doing it. I was a mating machine and vagina was the oil for my piston.

At that point I met this girl and we ended up getting married. Things were pretty good for a while. We did it all the time. That kept up for like 4 years and we entered into the married sex phase. I decided that I wanted to assign some sort of meaning to the whole thing. Sex now meant expression. I no longer just fucked my mate, but occasionally I “made love” to her. It was a new phase for my sexual existence. I had progressed from the innocent 12 year old sexual endeavor to my screaming, “why aren’t we doing it NOW,” phase to the caring and compassionate married sex/make love phase. Well I have to tell you that this first marriage ended badly and I inevitably ended up back in the “why aren’t we doing it NOW” section, but that’s another story.

Then I finally met my current wife and now I’ve come up with this whole new phase and it is great! You see, now I’m in the “innocent 12 year old sexual endeavor”—“why aren’t we doing it NOW”—“caring and compassionate married sex/make love” phase. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever come up with. I think basically this comes from the fact that I really love the person I’m with. She rules! She sort lets me do whatever I want, which includes this column. Now I spend my time thinking not of just having sex but how exactly do I want to do it. Also, how do I want to feel when we do it? Like I said, it’s great! I think about the whole experience I want to create for her. I have goals damn it! I have things to work for and she is where I want it all to happen.

I can’t imagine the next sex phase that I come up with, but I’m sure there will be another one. I can just imagine the swinger/hedonism/plastic surgery sex phase. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

Until next week I hope all is well, and please leave your comments if you have any. Also if you have anything you want me to write about let me know.

The Real Married Man!

The Real Married Man Begins Again

2005-07-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

I guess there is no better time than now to begin this venture, journey, sojourn or path. It seems an endless thing in which I now undertake but it does indeed end and only I know the meaning of its finality. Basically what I'm saying here is that I know when enough is enough and I know when to quit. Without further adieu... here we go.

Herein lays the very first posting of the Married Man blogger style. Once upon a time I began this whole thing as a college student, fresh from a failed marriage, child in mix and one hell of an antagonistic ex. I thought to myself, "hey maybe if I share my experiences with others I can in some way help out." I had visions of grandeur where I saw myself as the savior of men who didn't have a clue. I would field questions from readers and start like an advice column, but that never happened. In fact the only responses I did get were from a nutcase who happened to be a former professor of the university. He went at length to provide me with leading and insulting responses. We carried on this conversation, me through the newspaper, him through anonymous letters sent to me through campus mail, for some weeks. Finally it all ended when he accused me of being a faggot because I chose to ignore his letters and talked about decorating my apartment, which just happened to be the first apartment sans relationship.

So anyway, getting back to my admirer. He showered me with letters about how God would have saved my relationship and so on, which I appreciated until he called me names. That, my friends, was the final straw. I found out, by luck actually, who he was. It seems that he would actually just go to the secretary of the Undergraduate Student Government office and have her mail them to me. Well since she knew who I was she just put them in my mailbox at the newspaper. Also, she knew who he was. When I started talking about what a joke this fella was she told me who he was and pointed him out to me.

Well guess what happened next... I decided to confront the guy. I went up to him in the Student Union cafeteria and told him that I knew he was sending me letters and that I no longer appreciated the tone of said letters. He started to shake visibly. He denied sending them but let slip a detail about the letters that only he and I knew since I never published anything of what he wrote to me. I only shared the general idea of what he said in his columns. He shook more violently. So here is this old guy sitting in school cafeteria shaking with me standing over him. I'm not a small man. I am 6'1" and at that point I was about 230 lbs. I weigh more now, unfortunately, but we'll get into that later. I decide to hunker down to his level. I said, "I know that it's you, and I want the letters to stop." And viola' they stopped. Just like that! See what you have to go through when you have your own idea and decide to publish it for everyone to see? I can't imagine how Clinton felt when he decided to start banging interns and people found out about it. I digress.

Anyway, the main point of what I plan to do now is to share my experiences again. I am now remarried, hence the Married Man title and have a wealth of stuff I can talk about. Plus this time I would like people to respond with what they think. Sometimes I'll be sappy, sometimes I'll be crass and sometimes I'll probably just blather on about who knows what but it will always be me doing the talking... unless of course people respond to my posts. I'm sure I'll be able to handle that and deal with it when I have to. So look forward to more writings by me and I'll let you know what I think about Life, the Universe and Everything and not just the book but the world around us and how I think relationships affect us all. Feel free to submit ideas for me to talk about too. That was one of the biggest things I did before I guess was that I would go up to people I didn't know and ask what they would like me to write about. By the way, the column became wildly popular much to my surprise and I got to learn more about life along the way.

Until next time... the Married Man