Back from Boston

My back survived the drive from Boston to New York.   Six f'ing hours.   Now I get back to looking for work.   Things is gettin' dicey over here.   I'm trying to write an essay about the trauma that goes along with the disintegration of a career.   It's not as easy as you might think.   It's not enough to simply be descriptive.   In any case we have to go and pick up the bird from his boarding place.   I just thought I should get back to the blog in some way.   I'm feeling a bit disjointed.   Not too surprising.   Happy new year everybody.

The Back Story

I saw a new doctor today.  New to me at least.  I called this back specialist because it was time, after two years, for another cortisone shot.  A shot that makes all the pain go away, without all the pesky side effects of pain killers.  Side effects like a month in re-hab, the loss of friends, family and jobs.  I told the person I spoke with, when I called, that I was just coming in for a cortisone shot.  Period.

In Japan, two years ago, I walked into a doctors office and said, "Please give me an epidural cortisone shot."  These are also called "Trigger point" shots, for the uninitiated. Within twenty minutes I had my shot and was virtually skipping my way back to the hotel, pain free and well satisfied.

Not today.  This guy takes an x-ray - a pointless procedure,  tells me what I already know and then refuses to give me what I came for, saying that I first need an MRI.  "You know," he says, "If you've got an infection, the cortisone would kill you."  Well, fuck me. I'm not gonna drag this out.  Enough to say it'll be many days and a bit of luck before I get what I need.   So here I lie, in a lot of pain, clutching my bottle of Alieve,  waiting for the dawn.

The Yankees

The Yankees are 3 outs from another world series win.  But I was thinking, and I've been a Yankee fan all my life, that there really is something wrong with the out and out purchase of an all-star team.   They paid more for Sabathia than any team has ever paid for any TWO players!   They bought A-Rod, easily the best hitter of our generation simply because they were able to pay more for him than Boston.   Other than Jeeter, what player have the Yankees really develped - any time in recent history?   The only use they ever make of their farm system is use some promising player as trade bait.   Who's the last guy to come up through AAA ball in the Yankee system?   I mean, was this world series ever in doubt?  Not in my mind.  It was a done deal in most baseball minds from the very first game of the season. Something doesn't feel right about that.

Troubles

I need to write  a couple of things.   It's a little risky but WTF, I have nothing to lose that I haven't already lost.   The bills continue to pile up and it's been so long since I've had steady work, I'm starting to doubt it will ever happen.  Every day, I feel energy going to waste and either guilty or sad about my domestic situation.   Take tonight.  She gets home at 11:30  and will spend an hour or so reading her email and a couple of chapters of a book and be, once again, exhausted when she leaves for the office in the morning.  It's like this for her  every day.  She no longer enjoys her work and is frightened when clients look like they might quit or take a break.  She's become a bray animal.  I used to think of her laughing.  

It's like watching Secretariat pulling a tourist wagon through Central Park.  As for me, nobody in my former profession will hire me because of abusing, crazy days back when.  Days which ended more than ten years ago, but I guess the memories are vivid for all the witnesses.   In any event, removing that occupation from consideration leaves me craving any job at all.  I'm terrible at selling myself and with no experience in any other line of work I'm even anxious about the bookstore interview coming up later in the month.  I'm thinking about what to wear!   Whether I wear black or brown shoes are probably not at issue.  I don't  have the slightest idea of how to run a cash register (my wife pointed this out).  I've never had a retail job and don't really fit the specs.  I think you have to be friendly and outgoing and maybe know a few things about the stock.  But hey, everybody's got a story.  Right?  Boo hoo.

How I Escaped from The Parking Lot

I was highly motivated to leave the parking industry.  The weather in New York at the time was hovering near 15 or 20 at mid day.   It was one of the coldest winters on record.  I also hated working the night shift in a neighborhood that felt really dangerous, even though nothing ever happened.  It was always so quiet.  I was sure I would die there.   Then there was the pay.  Even though this was back in the day, $2.26 an hour was still not a happy salary.  I combed the classifieds every morning and applied for lots of jobs that never responded at all.   But one day I found an ad that said exactly this:

                                                    Doyle Dane Needs Three Copywriters.

I always loved to write and figured I would make a fairly good advertising writer.   But I had never done it and I had no way to prove my suspicions.   Nevertheless, I got an interview with Leon Meadow, who was in charge of hiring for the DDB creative department.   This was in the days when DDB was the ONLY creative agency in the world and, I later learned, everybody wanted to work there.  My interview with Leon lasted two hours.  We liked each other and had lots to talk about.  His politics were almost identical to mine.   He and I also had the same view of various awful campaigns that were then running on tv.  I was in a good mood that day and found it easy to make fun of these commercials and I made Leon laugh a lot.  And somehow, some way, he decided to take a chance on me.   He asked me how much I was looking for in terms of salary.   I tripled the parking lot salary and Leon jumped at it.  Later I found out I might have gotten quite a bit more.  But at the time, I was in pig heaven.  (MORE LATER)

Gorgonzola, Cars, Guitars

I just got back from dinner.   Two guys I know through the program.  I had the gorgonzola salad (small) with the rancid dressing.   I had about two bites.  I'm writing because I promised myself I'd write every day but, sadly,  I don't have anything special to talk about.  Oh.  There is one bit of fascinating news.  I cleaned the parrot's perch.  I took the damned thing outside and used a chisel to scrape off the droppings, which, in three days had hardened into a substance harder than diamonds.  Tomorrow I drop off the car at the body shop and get a rental for four or five days.  That's exciting because, as my friend Sam always points out,  nothing handles like a rental.  I intend to drive the thing as hard as the law allows.

At dinner one subject that came up was insomnia.  I've got a whopping case of it.  Tonight, I'll spend some time on the internet, do some reading and play my good guitar for an hour or so.  I looked up the guitar on ebay.  It's worth more than the house.  And there's my other, smaller, guitar which is on ebay for seven thousand dollars.  I'm going to sell it assuming I can find a buyer.  It's a very rare guitar.  Too rare.  It's the size of a travel guitar.   But this one's special.  Rosewood and beautiful inlays.  That and the fact that it's the best sounding small guitar I've ever played.  And they only made a hundred of them, of which this is number 44.   That's enough.  I'll get on with my story, about how I escaped from the parking lot and more.   But not now.  Tomorrow.  I'm too tired to do it justice right now.  Get some sleep all you fellow insomniacs.

No Work, Many Chores

I have no paying work.   The job I thought would provide a bit of freelance every month is not going to mean much.   I'll probably get something from them every couple of months or so but nothing much beyond that, I don't think.  The woman who took over for the previous work-giver-outer doesn't know me. She has her own stable of writers.  I'm an afterthought, if I'm even a thought at all.

So back to my story.   After I received my sentence from student court, , that very afternoon,  I packed my trunk and took the very next train to Chicago.  From there a plane home to New York.  There was no way in the world I was going to serve 90 work hours on the commons.  I was too important to be serving on what amounted to garbage detail.  I had my pride.  What were they thinking?

I arrived in New York.  For some reason, I thought my parents would be glad to see me.  I was their boy.  I was in error.

"You're not going to lie around the house," my father said, "You're getting a job.  And I mean this week.  I don't care what kind of job it is."  This put a damper on my plans to sleep till noon,  laze around in my bathrobe until maybe four in the afternoon and then see my friends.  So a job.  My father tossed the NY Times into my lap.  "Look for a job," he suggested.

As it turned out, there weren't many jobs for college drop outs of low ambition.  My resume was brief.  Very brief.  And I quickly discovered that was not really all that employable.  Most jobs required a suit.  I wasn't wearing no suit.  Nevertheless, after a couple of days I found an ad for a job working in a parking lot.  I would park cars for $2.26 an hour.   One problem.   I didn't have a driver's license although I did know how to drive and how hard could parking possibly be?   It was a nightmare.

You had to park the cars, backing up, at 90 miles an hour into a space almost exactly the size of the car.  The manager of the lot was a guy named Joe, I think.   What I mostly remember about him was that he never shouted, never seemed to get very angry.   Even when I was scratching nearly every car I parked.   But he had this vein in his neck and when I had one accident after another, the vein in his neck would go crazy.  Spasming like a son of a bitch.  There was a regular customer.  A blue Caddy.  I didn't have the passenger door completely closed so when I backed it up, fast, I tore the door off.  In this instance Joe actually did get angry.   He told me I would not be parking any more cars.   What?

What do you do in a parking lot, if you don't park cars?   You sweep.  They give you s very wide broom and you sweep.  You sweep the lot, but mostly you sweep the street in front of the lot.  This lot was on 35th and Park.  It's no longer there, but the subway is.  People would emerge from the subway and look right through me.  It was my first encounter with invisibility.   I didn't care for it.   I requested a transfer to one of Kinney's other lots.   They had many.  Joe was happy to have me transferred to a lot they had at 42nd Street and 10th Avenue.  It was, at the time, the most dangerous neighborhood in the city south of Harlem.   Now this lot is also long gone, but in those days it was a block square and, as the new guy, I got the night shift.  In the winter. In the cold.  There was no business at the lot after 9 pm. You'd have to be crazy to park your car there.  So I hung out in the little unheated shack they have for the staff.  I was the staff.  The entire staff from midnight to 8 am.   In the little drawer below the cash register was a blackjack, as if, when some guy pulled a gun on me,  I would be quick to swing into action with my blackjack.  Uh huh.   (FIND OUT WHAT I DO ABOUT ALL THIS IN TOMORROW'S POST)

What's It All About?

I have decided to make these writings tell my story as it has evolved to this moment.   It is the story of a man, in late middle age, who must start over again and make his life finally make sense.  This is not an easy story for me to tell.  Secrets will be revealed, feelings and thoughts I thought I had buried long ago will have to surface if I am to tell the entire truth.

It begins, skipping over my early childhood, when I am seventeen.  Off I go to college in the midwest, not really wanting to go, but feeling I had no choice.  Needless to say, from the first day, I brought difficulties and stresses into my life that I was entirely unprepared to cope with, but under the bright lights of student court my mis-deeds were simply more than I could bear.   After being caught in another county in Iowa, with an underage girl (I had no idea, honestly), I got to do something most other students never do in four years of college.

I met the dean.  In fact, it was the dean who personally bailed me out of the Ottomwa County Jail.  It was not a happy scene and after talking the police out of prosecuting me, I was told I'd have to go before student court, who would meet out my sentence.  Student court is a holdover from the Nazi era.  I never had a chance to defend myself and was given a sentence of ninety (90) work hours on the commons. During my shift, the temperature often dipped to 25 below zero. My job involved the use of a long piece of wood with a nail sticking out over the bottom end.  It was my job to pick up the wrappers and other garbage through the use of this pointed stick.   (MORE TOMORROW)

It Boils Down to This

For those few of you who may be following what I write here, it comes down to this question:  Can a person of my history and age come ever lead a life that doesn't hurt somebody, especially me?   What will I do to put food on the table and pay the rent(s).

No one will ever hire me again.  Not in my former occupation.  My name sends shivers through head hunters and HR people from coast to coast.   It always surprises me that they actually know the general stories.   I guess I was pretty noisy about it all.   Poor me.

The Squeeze

It's all hitting me at once.   Bills are due.  Taxes must be paid.  There's a $500 deductible on the car.  The car.  It was damaged when it was towed by the private towing company on Friday afternoon.  We still owe a fairly tidy sum on the Mini Cooper for damage sustained during the three years I had it.  The phone bill is through the roof.  The mortgage is due.  We owe for life and health insurance.  Behind on both. We do have a small amount of savings.  I guess we'll be dipping into it (again).  There doesn't seem to be another way.  I can't borrow money.  I don't know how to ask.  In any event I really hate it, so I resist even considering it.

Bitch bitch bitch.  Everybody's got problems.  I need to count my blessings, of which there are many.  I've got what money can't buy.  A woman who loves me ... I've even got a wife!   Just kidding.  I live in a beautiful home, in a beautiful neighborhood, shouting distance from the beach.  I'm a very lucky guy in another way too.  Most people who've with my proclivities are either hospitalized or dead.  And I'm neither.  I'm the wonder of the age.  Well, at least I must be  the most hard headed guy in the world.

From bed + iPhone

I'm about to turn off the light. I like the idea that I can blog from a prone position. I'm more prone to blog from here.

"Everybody's got a story and if they don't have a story,their story is just around the corner"

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

My Car Was Towed (Again)

I parked it down the street, near, but not blocking the driveway of a private house.  Well, maybe I was one inch into their driveway.  But all week they drove their two cars in and out of their garage without needing to take any action.  Until today.  Today, they called a private towing company and had my car towed to a private car pound that is now closed.  Obviously this makes it impossible to drive out to our house tonight as we had planned and looked forward to all week.   They told us this was a safe neighborhood.  Nobody said the people were hateful and looking for trouble.

Humility

I'm sorry I haven't been able to post anything for a few days.  My now two year long, crash course in humility continues as I contemplate a total financial wipe out and take whatever work I can get and am damned happy to get it at all.  I'm grateful that Althea's career continues to soar but it ain't enough.  I wake up, often enough, in a cold cold sweat.

Where Are the Funny Laws?

Al Franken (D.Minn) has suggested an amendment to the healthcare bill now being debated in the Senate. The amendment would mandate that 90% of the billions of dollars slated to support the health insurance companies, under the new bill, would have to go to health care itself.  Only 10% would be allowed for "administrative" costs (still many billions of dollars).   Good idea.

Good idea, but I'm a bit disappointed.  There's nothing at all funny about Al's amendment.  I was hoping that when Franken was elected, we'd finally get some laws that were intentionally funny.  A former comedian, I'm sure he's still a very funny guy.   Perhaps a law, patterned after American Idol, that would make all the insurance company execs compete in a gigantic, round-robin farting contest.  Or Topless Tuesdays in insurance offices.  Funny hats?   I don't know.  If anybody's reading this maybe you can suggest a funny law or two and we can send them all in.  You never know.

Thursday Night, Just Past Eight

I just got back from meeting with a group of friends.  I was dressed a little funny.  In 1994 I was, for the month of January, an inmate of the Silkworth Unit at Hazelden.   Tonight,  running out of comfortable t-shirts, I found a collarless shirt I had bought back then, at the Hazelden gift shop.  It has a fairly prominent Hazelden logo on the left hand side.   I'm told Hazelden doesn't have the gift shop anymore.  It never seemed right, that a suburb of hell should have key chains, t-shirts, hats and sweatshirts with the Hazelden logo.   I mean, it isn't Yale, is it.  And when I think of the real cost of the t-shirt, it makes me shudder.   You could go to Yale ten or eleven times for what that t-shirt cost me.