Chapter Forty-Three: Standing Against the Wind

"Who's gonna drive ya home.....tonight?"


Back to Basics

I was feeling like an empty shell, doing everything on automatic. Eat, (though I had little appetite) Sleep,(fitfully) and wander through the day. Peggy brought me down to earth in short order. "You can stay here for a couple of weeks but then you're moving out." Got it.

Peggy Williams was truly my best friend during those first really fucked-up months after the breakup. She sympathized but never patronized me. And it gave me the strength to get up off my ass and start the survival process. A week or so after I got there she did a complete astrological birth chart on me and came up with some fascinating things. There was an awful lot of personal stuff in her interpretations but the one thing that interested me most was her prediction that I would meet the "great love of my life" within the year. I didn't know if she was just saying that to make me feel better or what, but it piqued my curiosity.

I needed a job. What more logical thing to do but go back to good old Jaffe's Camera one more time? So I found myself once more having lunch with Paul and telling him my whole sad story. He hired me back on and that was that. My buddy Bill Stewart came out from Virginia and helped me furnish my new digs, a room I had rented in a small boarding house. Now I had my own furniture! Dresser, bed, my bike, a lamp and an alarm clock. Bachelor City.

And back to work at the lab. While things looked the same there, people treated me differently. I believe to this day that I must have had a flashing red strobe light right on top of my head, with a siren screaming: "This guy is in pain! He fucked up his life and he'll do the same to you if you get too close! Stay back!"

Sundays

Nearly every Sunday during my time down South I would visit with cousin Joe and his wife Suzanne. It would mean a hot, home-cooked meal, drinks, good conversation and usually some leftovers to take home for the week. Those guys were so good to me. Sometimes other people would come by and we'd all play Trivial Pursuit. I love that game! It was a relief to use my brain for something other than self-pity for a change. Old friends would stop by as well. The Jorgensen brothers, Chip and Greg. Big Al, the guy who got me busted at Point Magu Naval Base. The usuals. This was part of a slow healing process, but every now and then the scab would rip away and all that pain would come right back fresh.

1984 Olympics

With the Olympics being held just down the road in LA, there was a huge amount of local interest in the Games. The rowing events were being held at Lake Casitas in Ojai. I would see team buses rolling along 101 with police escorts almost every day. I watched every event I could during my days off from the lab. I was an avid cyclist by then which was good, because I had very little cash for gas. I followed the exploits of the USA Cycling Team, which won several medals due to the absence of the Eastern Bloc countries.



This is Gabrielle Andersen-Scheiss, a Swiss women's marathon runner. I was sitting at home watching what looked like a fairly boring win by Joan Benoit. She ran away from the field and never looked back. I was going to turn off the TV when the cameras caught Gabrielle entering the stadium. The announcers were actively debating what should be done about her. One was imploring the officials to help her as she lurched onto the track, obviously dehydrated and disoriented. The other insisted that if anyone as much as touched her she would be disqualified. You can see the man in white actively avoiding her. I found myself on my knees in that God-forsaken living room, yelling at the screen "Don't touch her! Come on, baby. Stay on your feet! Do it for me, Gabrielle!" Tears streaming down my face, I watched as she finally fell into the arms on the track officials at the end. I knew that if she could make it, so could I.

Gotta Get Up

Every day I woke up alone, feeling farther from reality. I worked through the day and went home at night. I watched TV, wrote letters to Lani, the kids, my folks. When things got too much I would hop on the bike and spin a quick 30 miles or so. One day a fat envelope arrived, bearing the official divorce papers. "Irreconcilable Differences" listed as "Reason for Divorce". Really? What were we arguing about? Whatever. The tone of the attorney representing Lani was pretty much "Here it is. Sign it and return it immediately. Failure to do so will result in complete emasculation." Cool. What else can you take?

The truly nice thing that Lani did for me was to ask for a fairly small child support payment and no alimony. Believe it or not, I hung some tiny little hope on that, thinking she might some day want me back. I signed here, initialed there, mailed the thing. And it was done. Now just a judgment and a waiting game.

In October I decided I needed to see the kids again, so I asked cousin Joe to come along on a road trip back to the Bay Area. Moral support badly needed. I might have "accidentally" run off the road if I had gone alone.

It was so great seeing PJ and Jess again. I hugged them for all I was worth, my heart bursting at the seams with joy and sorrow. We went to the park, out for lunch. Another day we visited some friends who ran a cattle ranch. Here's a picture of us there:

Sweet kids, and they still are. On the way back from the ranch PJ asked me: "Dad, why don't you love Mom anymore?" That hit me like a hammer to the forehead.

"I do still love Mom, PJ. We just can't live together any more. I can't really tell you more than that."

Kid's just four years old and it's breaking my heart. Jess was a beautiful little chatterbox who loved the Kool Aid Popsicles we were eating. Joe and I turned back for SoCal, me feeling like I was leaving an even bigger piece of myself behind.

Happy Holidays

So now Christmas is rolling around and I am feeling lower than whale turds. My boss, Paul, had just gotten fired. It was inexplicable to me but I soldiered on under the new manager, a total tool who treated me like the contents of a litter box. I was missing my wife, my kids, my life. People around me were happy, excited about the holidays. I felt my perspective shrinking down to what I could see in front of me, and that sucked.

The folks at the lab had swung a deal with the local Holiday Inn to get a room for our Christmas party. Perfect. The same hotel where Lani and I had spent our wedding night. So I would go, have a few drinks and then kill myself. Seriously, I was going to go out on the balconey and jump.

The party night came and I was excited, jazzed up at the fact that I would finally be at peace. I went up to the room and started drinking. I talked and talked, laughed at jokes. Well, time to go now. I slid the door to the balconey open and slipped outside, alone. Music and laughter were muted by the closed door. The fresh sea breeze cleared my head a little as I tried to figure out where would be the best place to land so I wouldn't just be a vegetable, but truly dead. Hmm. Why did I care? Suddenly, the faces of PJ and Jess appeared in my mind, their smiling faces distorted into grief and anger. Lani trying to explain to them why they would never see Daddy again. Having them grow up thinking, no, knowing I took the coward's way out. At that very moment I actually heard my ass hit bottom and rebound. I was not going to do that to them.

I felt complete joy wash over me, a happiness I hadn't felt for a very long time. I was made of stronger stuff. I could fucking well do this. I was so happy I wanted to tell somebody. I looked around and saw a champagne bottle sitting on a chair. I picked it up and swung it back, ready to toss it into the air in my place. It knocked over a glass which shattered on the balconey. The music and conversation in the next room suddenly stopped. People came pouring out onto the balconey as I stood there with the bottle in my hand. "Oh my God", said one of the ladies. "We thought you had fallen off the porch!"

"No, no, I'm fine. I'm OK, really."

I was ushered back into the room, fussed over. Wow. Am I George Bailey or something? I smiled and reassured all that I was OK, then left to tell my friend Peggy what I had (almost) done. She had a gentleman guest, and we three smoked a bit o' ganja before I told her: "Peggy, I almost killed myself tonight. I wanted to but I decided to stay alive for my kids."

She was shocked. The dude was confused. It was their first date. What a thing to drop on them. Well, got more people to see.

I drove all the way down to Joe's house, to a party I had not planned to go to, seeing as how I'd be dead and all. I walked in the front door and spotted Greg Jorgensen, a big, lanky, redneck Swede who was also my auto mechanic. He saw me and walked across the room. "NEWB!", he shouted, and gave me a huge bear hug. I nearly lost it, so full of joy and cascading emotions. I recovered nicely, and the party went well into the night.

The first night of the rest of my life.

Chapter Forty-Four: "...and there's more, Yes there's more. You hear and you see yet you do not believe that there's always more. There is more."

Chapter Forty-Two: Once in a Lifetime

"And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Countdown

In the couple of days that followed Lani's call I tried to come up with a Plan. How to make our marriage work? I really didn't have any close friends to talk to in California and I did not want to call my parents for advice. Having been an avid reader all my life I figured the best thing to do was read a book about it. I went to the bookstore and browsed through the Self Help section, looking for anything that could speak to my situation. I found Beyond the Marriage Fantasy: How to Achieve True Marital Intimacy, by Dr. Daniel Beaver. After reading the first couple of chapters it was clear to me that Lani and I needed real help. We had been living together in two separate worlds and it was time to see clearly. I hoped that when Lani read the book she would see we needed that kind of help as well. Just a couple of days more.

Olympic Torch

So I still had to hold it together and get some real-world work done back at Wild Bill's Photo Lab O' Horrors. It wasn't easy. Orders were few and far between so I didn't have enough to keep my mind off the feeling of impending doom. I found myself sitting in a printing room one day hiding out from the boss, feeling desperate. I got a legal pad and composed a long note to God asking him for help. I was trapped by my own pity, hoping something would turn around for me. It was a heartbreaking letter that I simply finished, read back to myself once, then hid it away in that dusty back room.

One day that July somebody at the lab told us that the Olympic torch relay would be passing through Oakland, just blocks away from us. I took my lunch break early and drove up 14th Street in search of a relay group. I found one pretty quickly and the fellow who was to be the bearer was happy to let anyone who wanted to hold the torch.

It was beautiful, with the Los Angeles Coliseum in relief and the words "Altius, Fortius, Citius" inscribed around the top of the bell. I felt a real connection with the history of the Games at that very moment. Then the relay approached and we all cheered as the flame was passed and "our" bearer ran off happily to the next station. It was a very bright spot in my day and in my life. And that part of the story wasn't over yet, either. The 1984 Olympics took on a whole new meaning for me in a short period.

"And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!"

Letting the Days Go By

The day Lani and the kids came home I had a dozen red roses on the table and a nervous hope that things would work out. She seemed distant again, unsure what to say to me, but she read some of the book I had picked up and agreed to see Dr. Beaver with me. I asked her why she was avoiding me and she told me that she had been thinking a lot about our marriage and her feelings. Just before leaving Milwaukee she had found a note penned by a favorite cousin who had passed away at an early age. The note described "what love is". In reading it Lani realized that she did not have many of the feelings expressed in this note and considered it a sign from her cousin that she needed to reassess things. So down went the roller coaster again. I couldn't take it. Just as I had done when things turned to shit between my parents and me I got in my car and took a drive around the Bay. I was out for hours, yelling at myself, at Lani, at God. Trying to come up with a Plan again. I could fix this. I'm not a bad person! I'm an idiot! You deserve this! Fuck it all!

I got back to the house just before dawn. I was so revved up emotionally that I couldn't sleep. I called in sick to work and got in touch with Dr. Beaver, the author of the marriage book. He seemed rather peeved by my insistence that we see him that very day but relented and agreed to meet us. I felt like I was down to my last shred of hope here. Dr. Beaver looked the part of a Modern Marriage Counselor, with a full beard, bushy, unkempt hair, brown polyester slacks and open-necked shirt. He listened as first Lani, then I poured out our stories, from our first meeting to the present day. He considered things for a few moments, looking thoughtful with his hands together and pressed to his chin. Then he said: "I get the picture of the two of you being in a swimming pool together. Neither one of you can swim and you're climbing on top of each other to keep from drowning. I don't think that's a healthy relationship at all. I don't know if there is anything I can do to help you."

So. That's it?

With little more to say he ushered us out the door and bid us good luck. Slam goes the door, see ya! Out in the bright July sunshine I felt like I was falling through space. We got in the car and drove back home. We discussed what we would do. I would move out because I didn't feel that sleeping in another room was a great idea. I needed time to clear my head so I was going back down to Ventura to see cousin Joe. I packed a few things in a suitcase, tossed my bike in the car. Lani was giving PJ and Jess a bath. I sat in the bathroom with them for our last moment together as a family. They were so happy, laughing and playing in the water. This was so unreal. What the hell am I doing? WAKE UP! I kissed my dear babies and told them I'd see them soon. I kissed Lani's forehead and told her I loved her still.

I paused at the front door, noticing the roses still in their vase. The petals had begun to droop and the arrangement looked a little sad. On an impulse I reached out and plucked one single petal and carefully pressed it in my wallet.

Then out the door and on the road.

One Last Stop

It was late in the afternoon and I didn't want to drive all night so I stopped in at my buddy Jim's house. He was very sympathetic and like so many friends have done over the centuries, suggested we getting totally pissed. I liked the idea, so we went out and picked up some beer, whiskey and cocaine. The substances flowed through my veins and I railed against Fate, women, artificial turf and whatever else my brain came up with. Late into the evening we went until all passing out.

"And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?"

I awoke some time later, the morning sun an angry spotlight through the window. "What the hell are you still doing here?" it seemed to say. OK, OK, I'm going. I found a scrap of paper and wrote "Thanks", leaving it on the coffee table. Then I snorted the last of the coke and split without looking back. Got to I-5 toward LA in a few hours. Considered throwing my wedding ring out the window for dramatic effect. Not yet. Burned down the highway through King City, Bakersfield, The Grapevine. Hotter than hell and I just kept going. CA126 at Santa Paula and down 101 to Ventura. What time is it? Time to stop. Call Joe's house. His mother-in-law answers. "Joe is at work right now but he'll be home soon." "OK, I'll call back."

"Where are you right now, Ed?"

"Oh, I'm in town."

"In town? We didn't expect you."

"I didn't expect to be here."

"Are you all right? You sound strange."

"Yeah. I feel strange. I'll tell you about it later."

"Why don't you come over now and wait for Joe?"

"I have some other people to see but I'll come over tonight. Thanks."

I went to the old photo lab and talked to one of the women I had worked with. Her name was Peggy and she was always a good friend, someone who could listen and then tell you just what she thought, no matter what you wanted to hear. She was getting off work later, so I went to the home of another woman and she fixed me a cheeseburger. The best, best cheeseburger I ever ate. The desert wind was still rattling around in my brain. I went to Peggy's house in Ojai later and she agreed to let me stay there until I found more a permanent place. Then on to Joe's to tell him what had happened and get drunk all over again.

Home away from Home.

"Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was..."

43: Same but not the same...