I’m not sure I’ve ever felt as unmoored as I have these last few months. The decision and the need to focus on writing full-time were mine. I’ve wanted to do that forever, really. But the sudden opportunity to do so was presented by people in trusted corners of my life and the lives of those I love most serving rejection, abandonment, and betrayal on a scale that, well, that you read about. Adding injury to injury were those who then abandoned ship instead of helping to bail.
Luckily, a few kind, brave sailors remained. And this is not the first time I’ve made a three-point turn driving the Queen Mary. But it’s still hard.
When I started this Substack a friend told me, “You can’t get glum or serious when you write. Nobody wants to read that. You’re funny, so you have to write funny.”
“Huh!” I said.
Well shit, I thought. I feel funny as fuck right now.
Forty years ago I was twenty-three years old. I owned a house with three apartments, one I lived in and two I rented, with a ping pong table in the basement where the washer and dryer also were housed. I was showing the basement to a prospective tenant, a guy named Bill who was about fifteen years older than I was. Seeing the ping pong table he said, “I’ll play you for a $200 rent cut. I win, the rent is $200 less.”
“And if I win?”
“I’ll pay you an extra $100.”
I was pretty sure he’d never offered to play a male landlord for a rent reduction, nor someone closer to his age. I was also pretty sure he hadn’t noticed the cast iron waste pipe that ran to the center beam across the basement on an incline.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll take this side.”
The first time he hit his head he said, “Hey! You knew about that!”
Well, yeah.
By the fourth and fifth times he hit his head but kept playing I knew there was something wrong with him. So I obviously ended up sleeping with him a lot, which you should always do with a tenant when you’re trying to command respect, especially if he’s a raging alcoholic who tends to pass out when he’s on a bender, leaving his kids effectively alone in the apartment so you end up spending all your time at his place babysitting. Which, by the way, leads to evenings like the one when the eleven-year-old looked up from his homework and said out of nowhere, “Dad’s hung like a donkey but he’s a really bad boyfriend” at just about the moment his eight-year-old brother came in running, shouting in some sort of dawning, MTV panic-rage, “IS BOY GEORGE REALLY A BOY?”
Where was I?
Eventually and predictably, Bill had to go. He found somewhere else to live, packed up his things, and moved out. On his last trip out the door he turned and said,
“You were worth it for the material.”
And that, finally, is my point.
I won’t promise you a humor column here. What I will do is shape meaning in the material that is life, as I have shaped behaviors, organizations, and even a profession in the decades I’ve left behind, and turn it into something I can recognize, or make sense of, or perhaps just survive a little bit more easily. And if I do it well, maybe it’ll do that for you, too.
I appreciate you being here to read it, because that makes all the difference.
Also, what the hell did he mean I was worth it for the material?
Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.
~ Dorothy Parker
Morning Teaistisms
Every morning I get up while it’s still dark outside. I shower, convince the beagle she also needs to get up, feed her and let her out, tuck her safely to her office bed, and then I make myself some tea. I make different kinds of tea all day long. I’ll also have a cup of coffee many days, but tea is my primary requirement. I am, I’ve learned, a teaist. If you live long enough, they’ll eventually make a word for you. OK, several, but one that doesn’t reference how you ruined real estate and killed the planet and so on. Teaist. I’ll take it.
Now that I’m an ist my understanding is it’s my duty to proselytize, and so I thought I’d share my morning cup with you. I’m always looking for new teas and preparations to try if you’ve got any ideas.
This morning I had White Peony tea, which is gentle and buttery and extremely yummy.
“You’ll never find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
– Winston Churchill
Have you tried Numi Matcha Toasted Rice? A unique taste.
Hugs……
I'm poking my head out from your distant--or maybe not so distant--past to say hello and to tell you how much I'm enjoying your pieces. I was nodding and laughing and feeling sad and happy all at once as I read.
(And I saw your former tenants Amy and Peter a couple of weeks ago.) xxxHester