The Bloody Doors Off

I’m approaching 56 in a couple of months, and I’m beginning to really feel it.

Yesterday, while doing a little cleanup around the condo, bending elicited grunts and winces of pain from various joints.

I had to beg off a hospital visit this weekend, because I’ve come to realize I have a little bit of PTSD over the heart attack back in April. I seriously don’t want to step foot in that place if I can help it. If I’m bent over and rise too quickly, or sometimes for no reason, I’ll get light-headed and my pulse will quicken and my heart will raise an objection. It takes me a minute to assure myself I’m not having another cardiac event. That’s how much this is ingrained.

I’m approaching 56, and I can see the majority of my life in the rearview mirror.

And I’m not sure what I have to show for it.

I have a wife, and son. They are my life.

But have I affected the world around me for the better? Have I even tried?

What is my legacy? Do I have one?

Who will remember me when I’m gone?

So yeah. Happy Sunday everyone.

I don’t understand.

I get the fatigue.

It’s been two years, after all.

Of course you’re gonna get tired.

But that shit’s still out there.

And it’s constantly mutating.

One strain may feel like a mild cold, with or without the vaccine.

Another will knock you on your ass.

People were hospitalized and dying because of this.

It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

Because people are tired of wearing a fucking mask.

Because it “infringes” on their God-given right to commit suicide by coronavirus.

Because they could give it to my father.

Or my mother-in-law.

Or my wife. Anyone I love.

It could kill them.

And you’d get away with negligent homicide because how could they prosecute that this?

I’ve seen my father once in the past two plus years.

There’ve been cases of Covid where he lives.

And because you won’t wear a fucking mask in public.

This virus is gonna run rampant, and flip the chess board every four to six months.

I don’t want my family to get sick, or die.

I don’t want you to get sick, or die.

And I’m sure you’d prefer to continue breathing.

Is it too much to ask?

Please.

Wear a goddamn mask.

And is something of a sadist.

Ya know, I had this whole bit.

About getting older, and how you start getting slower and, uh, things that take longer.

But there was a time when I swore an oath to avoid toilet humour when I’m writing.

Yes, I sometimes fail.

Not the point.

It takes me a long time to pee. It’s segmented.

You’ve got your main release.

And I could be done. Wake and shake.

But now.

My bladder taunts me.

Attendre! Je pense qu’il y a plus.

Okay. My bladder is French.

Because minutes later (yes, minutes) there’s a steady trickle, enough to realize it was right.

You know what’s coming.

Attendre! Je pense qu’il y a plus.

And then it adds a sensation, a tease.

Vous pouvez le sentir, n’est-ce pas ? Construire lentement.

My bladder does not lie.

But it didn’t provide an exact timeframe.

---

Eh, I’m gonna cut it short.

Getting engrossed in the January 6th hearings, and just saw that there was another mass shooting in Maryland today.

They were right. Living in interesting times is a curse.

— My brain, just now.

I swear, it’s a scene waiting to be written. Guy lying on a psychiatrist’s couch, decked out in a tunic, trousers and a cloak. AND a helmet with horns protruding from the left and right sides.

Your classic Freudian office set up.

There’s just one problem.

I don’t know if this guy IS a viking, or having a mid-life crisis.

Or a viking having a mid-life crisis.

Because the only plundering happening today are the corporations and the banks and oil & gas.

They’re the top of the food chain.

People fear them.

This guy believes a Trickster God who, upon his father’s orders, turned himself into a female horse and end up giving birth to an eight-legged mare (I’m assuming it was female, I can’t be bothered to investigate further).

Steed. I caved. Sleipnir was male.

And no one can play him better than Tom Hiddleston.

This guy. This viking.

He doesn’t strike fear in anyone’s hearts.

Don’t get him started on the other fifty percent of what Vikings did. Dude never followed that crowd.

So when did he first think he was a viking?

Makes the most sense that it’d be from his first memories.

Which isn’t that funny.

That’s what’s been missing.

Why I can’t write.

I can’t access that part of my brain that finds the twist in a simple phrase that passes through my brain, or listening to the same song on repeat because it is talking to you, dammit, keep listening. Or finding some random table clock with a corporate stamp and a “thank you for your service” inscribed on the back, and it makes you wonder what would happen if Santa decided, on Christmas Eve, that he was going to retire at the end of his shift.

Or a Santa who got laid off because the parent company of Christmas was making some “tough choices” in order to boost shareholder profits.

Which screams funny.

It’s a funny premise.

Only I can’t see past that. Because, what I just wrote on the line above?

That’s bullshit.

That’s what I’m telling myself.

Which means I am self-sabotaging.

Well. Ain’t that the shit.

I’m the writer’s block.

I’m not gonna rant about the interpretation of the second amendment or America’s unhealthy fixation on guns. I mourn these children, as does everyone else. But I have an unhealthy fixation. To run to social media. Because I can’t just grieve on my own. I need to be part of the conversation. I need to call out the Alex Jones false flag insurrectionists, thinking that my voice is the one that’s going to make a difference.

And I know I’m going to hear politicians ad nauseum offering their “thoughts and prayers” and “now isn’t the right time to talk gun reform”, and it’ll make me wanna get back on Facebook and spread their horrid, cowardly words to however many friends I have on that site. (And what algorithm is filtering this post and to whom?)

It’s complete and utter bullshit. No one gives a fuck what I think.

No one’s texting me at 3am asking to crack the code of the universe. Or if I’ve seen any really good porn lately. (For the record: I have not.)

And that’s why nothing gets done.

Not that I have any power over this. I’m being metaphoric. The powers that be don’t give a fuck what we think. And as long as people and institutions like the NRA grease their Senator or Congressperson’s palms, they’re gonna continue not caring.

A shame there’s no lobby that would pay Senators and Congresspeople to keep their hands off of women’s bodies.

We’re literally killing the planet, but hey oil makes money so fuck Mother Earth (remember, it’s not consent if she says no at any time).

And don’t forget the guy who decided his country would invade another and if anyone got involved physically, he’ll press a button and end everything everywhere.

We are so fucked.

And I’m sitting at my desk, desperately trying not to crack a joke at this.

If we’re going out, let’s have some fun.

Nine years.

Nine fucking years.

I’m coming up on nine years since I quit smoking.

A year since I gave up vaping.

And I don’t miss it.

I still have 3 of the mods on my desk.

Haven’t been able to let them go.

You know. In case.

They’re a relic of my past. Archaeologists will have a field day explaining that.

That also means nine years since my little ‘sabbatical’.

(If you really wanna know the story, scroll back to the fall of 2013. I’m not rehashing.)

[checks the date]

Yeah, I guess it started ramping up about now.

Anyway.

I remember this as I ponder my life post heart attack.

And I’m thankful I quit when I did. (No sense in wishing it’d happened sooner; I tried to quit twice before, and clearly neither attempt took.) Any damage I could’ve inflicted to my heart that may have hastened last month’s adventure.

Not to mention the tiny spot on my lung that hasn’t grown a centimetre since my GP decided to schedule a yearly CT scan.

My point.

And I think I have one.

[checks pockets]

Quitting when I did may have saved my life. And it gave me focus then; a goal. I had a long road to travel and I sure did love lighting up on my walk from the subway station to the house on Greenwood.

And now I’m here.

Fuck.

I really wanted a poetic exit to this post.

Something to express.

Contentment.

IYKYK.

I have Country Roads stuck in my head.

Not the John Denver version.

This one

(Yes, my love. You’ll have to go to the blog and not just read the email if you want to understand the reference.)

What does that have to do with the title?

It doesn’t.

It was in my head, and it wouldn’t leave.

If you wanna discuss love as a topic, I’d say in this moment I am quite against the concept.

Oh, fuck, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely fucking love my wife and family and my good friends.

But love gets you fucking hurt.

Because you get attached. And one day.

They’re ripped out of your life.

Just like that.

Usually with no notice.

And even if you’ve steeled yourself against the inevitability.

Think you’ve made your peace.

It’s still sudden.

Closure is bullshit. Which now makes me laugh because earlier this year, I thought I’d actually found closure with a piece of my past. That a door had been opened, an old friend walked in, we shared virtual tea, and wished each other well. Maybe we’ll meet the next time you’re in the city and grab a coffee.

But that’s just an end of a chapter.

It’s not the final line of the book.

The End is hundreds of pages yet to come.

You only get closure when the curtains are pulled shut one final time.

Careful not to squander the opportunity.

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads

Family’s come to mean so much to me.

Especially after mum passed.

And I envy those who still have a chance. To make things right. To make them batter.

I didn’t.

I had started to.

I’d gone through a self-imposed exile with my family when I was younger. Working the midnight shift for fifty weeks a year, made the isolation easier to nurture.

But if you ask me today why I’d done that, why I was willing to shut myself off from my family.

I couldn’t tell you.

There was no justification for it.

Granted, I was undiagnosed as manic/depressive (and later bipolar 2) at the time. Something in my chemically imbalanced brain must’ve won over the rational section of my brain.

So maybe a part of me feels like I have unfinished business with my mum. Some act I need to perform. A puzzle I have to solve. A story I have to write.

I am most certainly NOT writing a one-man show. Nor would I ever fucking consider acting in such a debacle.

I’ll think about it. I suppose.

I barely made it through the day.

Been non-stop on a client project they needed turned within twenty-four hours.

Took me nineteen (not including a two hour nap).

So far.

We pushed the deadine to Thursday afternoon. There are a few final things I couldn’t get done.

This is my life as a freelancer. There can be nothing all day, you take a nap for an hour or two, and when you wake up and check email, you’ve got a job request so sleep, and dinner, get pushed back.

And back.

But this has show me… that I’m not that guy anymore. I can’t work twenty-nine hours and be functional, physically and mentally. I need to take breaks.

Otherwise a day like today.

I hitched a ride with a vending machine repair man
He says he’s been down this road more than twice
He was high on intellectualism
I’ve never been there but the brochure looks nice

Sheryl Crow

I sometimes dream of road trips.

Can never remember the destination. Don’t know if there ever was one.

And never with the same person (people).

That hadn’t really popped up in my mind before. Of if it did, the thought was so fleeting that a whisper carried it off to obscurity.

Tonight it chose to properly remind me.

Also the few road trips I did take over the years.

My first strip club.

Doug, Anthony, George and I. We were, eighteen? Shit, this is gonna depend on whether this trip happened before or after my first trip to Buffalo. I’ll get to that.

We grew up together. Three of us lived on the same street within stone’s throw of our houses, and the fourth lived on the first cross street to the left. The memory is hazy, but I remember it was about my birthday. And we took the QEW westbound out of the city. To what city, I have no clue. I remember a seedy strip club. There were wood shavings on the floor. (Which I now think was there to absorb any spilled beer or worse.) And a dancer, who back then would’ve been my age now (okay, maybe mid-forties), who tried to take the belt off my pants.

I’d had a beer or two, but that was Not gonna happen. She intimidated me.

Buffalo.

I remember I was nineteen, and you needed to be twenty-one to drink in the State of New York. I was on co-op assignment with The Scarborough Mirror and the bullpen decided one Friday they were going to the Anchor Bar in downtown Buffalo and they invited me along. For some inexplicable reason, I began chanting pro-Soviet propaganda as we approached the border. I was reminded it was a long walk home. (I have proof of this somewhere.)

It was the first time in Buffalo. First (and not the last) time at the Anchor Bar. Finest wings I’ve ever tasted. Nothing has compared in the past thirty-five years. And I feel in love with live jazz.

Oh yeah. I tried to conduct a phone interview with Monika Schnarre (Ford Models 1984 “Supermodel of the World”) in the Anchor Bar’s one phone booth. Ended up rescheduling for her Toronto press junket the following week.

I was nominated for that article.

Not because it was good.

Good lord. It sucked.

It appeared on page 3 on the specific week all main articles were generated in all the boroughs.

But I was still nominated, dammit.

National Museum of the United States Air Force

This was a memorable road trip, for all the wrong reasons.

We got lost in the middle of the night, on backroads in Ohio. We couldn’t see the road in front of us. Which turned extremely scary when, as we were speeding forward, we left the road and sailed through the air, because of a sudden and extreme dip in the, well I can’t for sure call it pavement.

We drove through the wrong side of Cincinnati at two in the morning. And we were too afraid to roll down the window and ask for directions.

My friend Paul snored. We shared a two double-bed motel room. His sleep apnea ensured I couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t fall asleep until we were back home a day later.

Pork Burgers at Harmony Lunch in Waterloo

A woman I was seeing at the time and I drove out to Waterloo based on a friend’s recommendation, and had amazing burgers. That had to be prior to 2016, ‘cuz that’s when they originally closed and were reopened by a group who promised to be faithful to the little diner that’d been around since 1930.

Flash forward to today.

That just feels like a lot of work.

Packing for a week-long stay at a cottage takes a flow chart for planning. And I can’t make those mental gymnastics on my own. (Marlo may add “at all” and she wouldn’t be wrong.)

And so I dream.

Sitting in the passenger seat, feeling the car roar to life as we race along a well-travelled highway to destinations unknown. Stopping at the most unlikely restaurant/diner and discovering the best [insert personal preference here] in all of Canada. Praying the motel room door locks from the inside. (And this is important: it should NOT, under ANY circumstances, give off a murdery vibe. Your first thought after stepping into the room should not be, “And how would you like to be murdered this evening?“)*

It’s almost 2:30 am.

Should’ve been in bed an hour ago.

Alright, I’m on my way.

Places to be.

* True story.