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."