This is the moment, right here, in this picture, that I knew you. I saw it all. Everything you were from that moment to now, I saw play out before me. The light breeze in your hair, the sun behind you, the smile, the earnestness, the warmth, the hope, the beauty and the mischievousness. From a short distance, the far off glance, the challenge ahead, crouching in preparation for great effort, the joy of being resolute, of having made a decision to go forward: as if you were saying, “Look at me, I’m here for now, but I’m getting ready, I’m about to go where I’ve never gone before and I’m ready for it, are you?”

I wasn’t ready for it. I’m still not ready for it. I knew then looking at you everything I know about you now. The same but having moved forward, having moved beyond. Being everything that this picture promised and everything that you were looking at. Everything that was more, that you were already ready for, have always been ready for, will always be ready for. From this picture I knew you and all that you are capable of. I see you today, and every day, as the realization of this picture, a fulfillment of the gleam of that little girl’s eye: afraid but determined, ready even if not quite prepared, open to whatever comes next.

I’ll never be ready for it, but I saw it coming. O what a beautiful sight you continue to be.

in the age of harassment. out on lake norman, morresville, north carolina. after heavy morning downpours the day turned gleeful. bright, sun filled, blue green lake that we barreled through. now, early evening, the heat thickening around my neck and joints. like a hot tub without the water. welcoming but a little dangerous, a little pissed off.
i keep replaying the events from last thursday, the stupid meme i posted and the reaction, the subsequent punishment. the disquieting sense of betrayal. i posted a nsfw meme. the optics: we’ve all gone through harassment training. i’m a manager, etc. was told being terminated was even on the table. not sure if that’s because i flatly asked if that was going to be the case.
but there are other details too. i retracted the email once i sent it. it hit only three people. after a conversation between my managing director, my director and hr, judgement delivered. i was going to call each member of the team and apologize for the email. i was going to retake the training. i was, after coming back from vacation, going to make an apology to the team for the same meme. hr polished it all off with, how i had expressed with him how i found problems with the harassment training and that now perhaps i would take it more seriously.
then right after, a call from the MD: this is me now, your friend. i dont think less of you. this has not affected your career. i would still invite you over my house for dinner. i make the calls of the apology tour. almost everyone doesn’t know what i am talking about because i had retracted the email and they never saw the original. a couple of them started googling to see what i might have sent. i call my direct. he mentions again that termination was on the table. it irks me that it was. or if it wasnt and this was a scare tactic, it bothers me even more. that this was serious. i had to understand my position now. i was a manager, i had to take this seriously. at the end of the day, he texts me, not email, text: it’s over and done with, dont let this ruin your vacation.
and that’s the betrayal i am talking about. i never said i didnt take the training seriously. i’ve had dozens of conversations with HR about the very nature of company culture, how to maintain it as the company grew. how to interview, how to find candidates. and the problems i found with the training was that it was deceptive. it was disingenuous from the onset. there is an exercise at its beginning. choose who others would think most likely fit the description given. note, not YOU, but OTHERS. what followed: most like to be a leader? picture of man, picture of woman. three seconds to chose. most likely to have a drug problem: picture of black man, picture of white woman. you can see where this goes.
and in the end, the conclusion, “you see how our subconscious biases can influence our choices?” smug. how do i see that? my subconscious biases? didnt this exercise start with what i thought OTHERS would choose? what does my awareness of the biases and stereotypes in our society have to do with my thoughts and feelings? isnt the program assuming that i am complicit then? this exercise doesnt demonstrate my biases but rather my awareness of how fucked up the larger culture is.
but the exercise proceeds that i am an accomplice. that i am already guilty and that we need to fix it. and here’s how. in other words, it’s a set up.
and i had said this in the context of the larger conversation we’ve been having. but obviously not. it was repeated during the conference call between my direct, my MD and HR. it was used against me.
and now all i’m thinking about is bailing. all i’m thinking about how, a week and a half AFTER my apology tour, i have to make one final act of contrition. i have to bring it all up again and apologize for the meme during our team meeting. all i’m thinking about is the times i’ve been cursed at. all i’m thinking about is the teasing and mockery i’ve received and how i laughed it off. because i am not stupid. because i am very fucking aware of power dynamics and how the very bullying that the training covered to avoid is being enacted right here. what a joke.
p.s. in the second round of training, i was given what i am assuming was the harder california version, which included people in transition. it also included an exercise where the choices i was given were impossible to chose from. they were all sarcastic or rude. the training was 2hrs. i finished it in 48 minutes with a score of 100. fuck them.

she asks, Why do you have to drink like that?
eh, bc i hurt. bc i am a disappointment. it’s rare that i drink. it’s not even once a week, it’s like once a month. i dont know what to tell you. i’m still angry. this life is leaving me. i’ve accomplished nothing that i ever wanted to. i am not a writer. i am not a fantastic husband. i am a bumbling father. you said it yourself: what have i done to make our kids extraordinary? nothing. bc i am not extraordinary. and i wanted to be. i wanted to be so much. i wanted to do so much. and i’m not talking fame. i’m not talking money. it’s like when you write a sentence: the first word is impossible. Where to begin? Infinite possibilities, so many to choose from. But then you choose one. Half of the possibilities are gone. You start with one word and you cannot start again. You choose one word to begin with and the next word cannot be so many others. And with each word of this life sentence, your options become fewer and fewer. Each choice limits what can come next. Until everything is exhausted. Until you get to the end. Full stop.

My Dearest,

Things have not gotten easier. I promised that they would but the ebb and flow of life and work tug and push me around like flotsam in a storm. If I claim to be the rock of this family, it is only to be clung to in times of severe weather: else you are smashed.

You however are the shore. You however are the land in which we can find peace and lush forests in which to live. You are the beauty that life brings and the bounty that safe harbor promises.

How I wish to always be on your shores.

What have I done with my life. Burning through it. Harder than ever before. Is it passion? Is it escapism? Am I avoiding all the things I’ve built up in the last years? To go from ever present, ever caring father, to exhausted and diligent company man? I think of it and feel nothing, only the drive to push harder. It gives me perspective. No that’s not quite right. It gives me value? Sure but to whom? Turning 45 this year. Halfway mark at best. This life lived so far, has it been very long? At 12 it seemed like forever. The last 12 have seemed like a blip. My father warns me on the one hand, don’t work so hard, you don’t want to miss out. A month later he scolds me for not answering his texts within 15 minutes.

To be continued, conjured up from the previous attempt, the last try never being the last, a resuscitation, a recitation, a mantra, a belief, a prayer.

I asked io if she believed in God and when she said yes, I asked why. Mz was livid, said later, why put that in her mind?

Because I am full of it. I am full of the yearning for doubt. I have no doubt in my mind that the terror I feel in the night before I pass out exhausted is that this is it. The be all end all end game and my options have run out.

The new worry: I can never go to school again, I can never fall in love in again, I can never be new again. Even worse: australia will never happen for instance. Sky diving will never happen, living abroad will never happen. What I have seen and where I have gone amounts to 90% of what I will see and do in this life. This life, as if another. I will see and do in life. My life. Period. End stop. End all.

How nice for something else, for something more. For religion, for science fiction, for fantasy. For magic. There’s so much of it around us, and yet, and yet.

No, this is it. End all. Full stop.

Later, night. Almost there. For a brief moment. The singular. The alone. The only. What peace. What worth do I really have at this point? Manhattan’s a mad house, a fun house, batches of people who desperately want to lose their minds in patches of darkness and stone. Only this. All the time.

Silence, break it. Ha. It escapes me, the potency of it is there and but no longer waiting. Leaving me. You’ve all left me. All my old lovers are now old. Even the despair, even his death, old and thin and  emaciated. Worn through, see through, abandoned. Yes, abandoned but not condemned.

He said this to me, remember this. It’s all habit, all of it, everything you think you are, it’s just a memory, muscle memory of what you should do, how to be.

And I think he’s right. I think how as I move I am thinking of my mother, how she would sort of the dishes, how she would open a kitchen cabinet while stirring a pot, how she would wipe her brow with her while on her hands and knees scrubbing.

And I think of how he spoke, always a smile on lips that whispered violence. They way he held my hand and graced my cheek with the other. How he lied, staring into my eyes, how I lie staring yours.

So long, so so long.

He holds it close to himself, this idea of himself, this bleeding maw of himself. This thing that once was, the who he had been. And what now? What’s left now? A husk?

Nononononono

So much more than that. It’s all trivial. He’s come to realize it’s all trivial, even the children, the woman, the mother, the father. He walks through the night, empty streets of suburban arrogance, it’s all so trivial. Only the air, the silence that is not silence, that is empty of them and their jostling, only the air matters. Because you need to live. You need it to feel alive. He laughs. He sounds so stupid. He walks through empty streets and relishes every step forward where another living person doesn’t cross his path. It’s so easy to disappear. It calls to him. Like it did to this father before. And perhaps before him as well. Being present doesn’t necessarily guarantee presence. The being there, the being wholly and relentless there.

Nononononono

Being there but nowhere to be found. To  be looked at and not seen because you’re a figment of their imagination. You said it didn’t you? At best, you said, at best we’re an impersonation of ourselves. At best, you said. At fucking best. How have you not lost your mind?

Time again, here again, hipster to be.

Bought myself some glasses, I’m insane. 400 bux? That’s bananas.

But another part of me says, no, do it, you deserve it. Grow up. It’s time.

This could’ve been your life, in another life. This could’ve been you everyday. In coffee shops and a tablet, a laptop, a notebook. You would scribble in a book, mad minute dashes of random thoughts that were brilliant. Or at least you thought they were profound. And they were, because they were you, at that time, trying to catch something, trying to make it mean something by writing it down.

And now, now, years later, were you foolish? Does my desire from then to capture it all, to make it precious, does it come off as futile? Painfully infantile?

I work with this fellow, Aaron Perlstein, graduate of Stuyvesant HS (RIVALS!) who is very very liberal. He reminds me of who I once was. He reminds me of that mad writing, small uppercased scrawls across half a dozen books (and that’s all your writing amounted to isn’t it? Little more than half a dozen, if at that)

She dresses me up in pearls (why pearls? Why the vomit of some mollusk?)

I want to live.

Arent you alive now?

Yes, no, maybe. I wanted more.

But you have everything.

It’s not everything though.

We were talking about this article that we might see immortality in our lifetime. Not invulnerability, I mean you get hit by a bus or fall off a skyscraper, you’re done. But some serious life extension if you keep the machine well oiled. We talked about how cool it would be to dial our ages up and down.

“Think of it, we can go to Asia like twenty year olds with sharp eyes and sturdy backs”

“But what about the kids?”

“O we can scale our ages up to what they expect us to be, for the grandkids at least.”

I then I told her if I had a choice I would want to live forever. “I want to see how it all ends,” my eyes got teary, “You don’t understand I want to see the sun go out.”

And other twisted thoughts like this. Like wanting to bury my children when they grow old and die. Everyone thinks I mean I want them to die young, how can I be so brutal, how could I live through that?

What they don’t get is that no one will ever love my children as much as I will. No one will care for them in death. No one will take care to see that they have a proper burial, they are not taken advantage of. I want to see my children go off into peace.

Who will take care of them when I’m gone?

This little tribe of mine. Perhaps it’s too much, maybe I’m asking too much of myself, expect too much, but I want to be there for all of it. I want to hold their hands when my daughter gives birth to a child. I want to brush the tears off my son’s cheek when his first born first goes off to school. I want to pull her close to me when the last breath leaves her.

I want the pain and madness and horror and joy of it all. I want it to go on and on endlessly. I don’t want it to stop.

She puts me to shame. Io just read the first paragraph to an essay she writing and she’ only 12 but it sounds like something I would’ve written in high school, college even. And this was something she did not want to do. Faced by the challenge of it she wanted to shirk it. To let it go, to let it slide. I told her, this is what I had done, I had become afraid, of being crushed by the possibilities of what I could be. She’s writing an essay for a program that sounds like a cross cultural exchange thing, where a cohort from her school will be a bridge to another in Uniondale. And of course she is afraid, of course she think she can’t.

She told me once while we driving, that she thought my demanding nature instilled a lack of self confidence in her. It still bothers me, but then again, her competitiveness, her yearning to do well, the fact that she also recently said she found middle school a lot easier than she thought it would be, tells me in the end I was right. That I put her on the right path. Yes, she might always be a little shy, might always think she hasn’t done enough, but that has always been the point: a little bit of self doubt goes a long in way in ensuring you are right, that you can always do better.

I listen to David at work, who praises his son but curses his daughter. Rebellious and artistic, his daughter confounds him. I hear him on the phone sometimes with them and the gravitas I have always praised him for attains an edge of harshness that is palpable if not down right smothering. There is only authority in his voice, no compassion. And yet when he speaks of his son, it is almost as if he is baffled by the boy’s temerity, the boy’s lack of spine? That’s not quite right. David is proud of both of them, even his daughter, but it’s almost as if he is worried for his son.

And there we were, Io and I, brain-storming, which she didn’t want to do, “We don’t brain-storm in middle school daddy.” And suddenly, while I was ranting about how privilege we were, how despite her privilege being born a woman gave her a disadvantage, the next thing I knew she was writing, lost in the keyboard. I shut up then, I recognized it. She found the voice of the piece she wanted to write. She found something interesting in that voice and was having a conversation with it. Who was I to interrupt?