[Click here for the editorial introduction to this article, "Someone's Got to Do It," by Tom Shroder.]
I QUIT--ESCAPE FROM THE
DRUGSTORE
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU JUST SAY NO
by T.M. Shine
A few weeks after I quit my job at the drugstore, I received an exit questionnaire from the
personnel department. The form letter that came with it said the company was concerned about
my departure. It's the same form the company sends to every employee who leaves under his or
her own free will, from the stockman to the manager.
I had been the manager, the guy in the booth who approves your personal checks. I had made
retail my career for 10 years, and by the standards tucked into my personnel file in some cabinet
somewhere everything had been just hunky-dory. Well, almost everything.
But the point is, I was history, and still they were sending me forms. I had explained myself to
everyone from Tina at the checkout counter to the Vice President for Everything, but apparently
no one was satisfied. Not even me. So I put the form before me, front and center, and prepared
myself for that level of honesty you rarely reach even at 3:23 a.m. when you finally figure out
why you can't go back to sleep.
Under the question, "Why did you leave?" there were two eight-inch lines. And I said to myself,
"Two lines, that's it man. That's all it's ever gonna be. Two lines and I better sum it up and get
on."
So I ran through a few sentences in my head. It had to be short; I didn't want to run over the lines
or point arrows to the back page.
I put the pencil in my hand down so I wouldn't be able to erase and got a Magic Marker and after
reading the question one more time, "Why did you leave?" using both lines, I printed it large and
bold: "SO IT WOULD BE OVER."
ALMOST PERFECT
I said my personnel file was almost perfect. The one small asterisk is attached to a description of
a story I wrote for this magazine almost two years ago. The editors had asked me what it was
like working in a drugstore and why I did it. I just tried to answer those questions as honestly as I
could. It was a lot easier to explain the what than the why.
Working in a drugstore, for a large company with national headquarters and thousands of outlets
in hundreds of cities and a large logo on every wall, was a daily dose of insanity.
So why did I do it? Why does anyone spend his life going through the motions of a job he has no
interest in beyond the pay? Because I couldn't bet the security of the people I loved on the
long-shot of my dreams.
There was one problem with my answer. From the day it was published, I couldn't live with
it.
THE CRITICS
When the story, "Why I Work at the Drugstore," first appeared, the phone calls starting rolling in
only hours after it hit the boxes. There was laughter and other managers, whom I considered
buddies, were reading their favorite paragraphs to me over the phone. "I love it. I love it," they
kept saying. I enjoyed it while I could. I knew Sunday would evolve into Monday, business as
usual. A day of reckoning. As soon as I came into the store I began getting periodic reports from
a secretary in the main office. "All the bigwigs are locked behind closed doors. They only have
one copy of the story and it's spread out all over the table," she said. "I wouldn't give them my
copy."
By coincidence, the Vice President of Almost Everything West of the Pecos was in town visiting
stores. He and my boss were spending the afternoon checking units, as they say in retail. Are the
bathrooms clean? Is there a double facing of Snickers? They would march up and down the
aisles, smile at the customers and employees and then tell you, you better get this damn place in
shape.
I spent the day waiting for my visit. I knew this one would be special. They'd have to confront
me. I had just been promoted to a brand new store, so my bathrooms were clean, my Snickers
faced. There would be nothing to do but talk about the article. I was at the end of the line, right
on the border of the district. They moved closer and closer and the calls kept coming. "Just left
here, must be on the way to Shine's," each manager would say, tickled to death. I waited and
waited, never considering that they might arrive with a replacement, ask for my keys and send me
on my way. They couldn't do it, I thought. The place is brand new, I've just been promoted, my
record is clean. I'm harmless.
Finally, I got a call that they had turned around and headed south, probably calling it quits. It
was late and I stood staring outside, watching the darkness come down and feeling a bit
disappointed that there would be no confrontation. I checked my pants for my keys and headed
toward the door as the PA beeped. It was the squirrelly voice of the front cashier squeaking over
the system, "Mr. Shine, line 1."
"Terry," my boss said in the same tone that had made my belly sink for years. "Humpty wants to
talk to you," he continued. Actually, he didn't say Humpty, he said a name. Humpty is what I
call the veep from out of town, the boss's boss. "I assume you'll understand why he doesn't want
to talk to you in your unit. Could you meet us at the Howard Johnson's down the road from
you?"
Oddly enough, I had had all day to prepare what I would say to them, but it was only in the last
few minutes of my ride to Howie's that I began wondering, what could I possibly
say?
And when I slid into the booth and the first words out of his mouth were, "How could you do
this?" my position wavered. His voice was sincere. I could be viewed as a traitor.
Then he followed up with, "I don't understand," and I realized, that no, he wouldn't understand,
he would never understand. We could sit here and have a thousand milkshakes, but he would
never understand.
"You know," he said, "if there was even one positive note in here, maybe I would feel different.
But it is entirely negative."
Possibly, it is because I live the positive every day, I told him. You have taught us again and
again that dealing with the public is an act. We put the happy face on. When I got the chance to
write about it I went the other direction--to the things we make believe we don't see.
He shook his head and said, "All my teachers wanted me to be a writer when I was in school. I
was a great writer but I found it boring. My daughter is a great writer, too, but she hates
deadlines." Great writing runs in the Humpty family.
"What's your daughter doing now?" I asked.
"She's still going to school," he said. "She doesn't know what she wants to do."
When I first came to Florida I didn't know what I wanted to do. That's dangerous.
The job service sent me to the drugstore and I never left. It was the first place they sent me and I
stayed for 10 years. How do we let that happen? Is it a form of giving up? I hate to feel we give
up so early in life. What does that leave us?
"The way they talk about you in the paper, they must have offered you a job," he
said.
"No," I said simply, realizing for the first time that maybe someday that would be
possible. Maybe someday I could actually write for a living. People do it.
He went on demanding explanations and wanting names of people involved in every
incident I wrote about. I had no explanations for him. I had no answers. It was all on paper. It
was hard for me to comprehend that the words could not speak for themselves, that actually
putting something in black and white is not enough. It would take me another 18 months before I
figured out just what it would take.
NO BUTTER
I met with Humpty several more times to discuss the extinction of the American
worker's satisfaction with the balance of his work life and home life. He just couldn't seem to get
to it.
It was always the Howard Johnson's or Holiday Inn and he would always find a table
in the kitchen corner of the dining room, where on a rolling service table lay the coffee maker.
He never drank coffee. He never touched a bit of food. His mouth was rigid and mechanical.
His eyes were marbles in an adult's game. We had come to talk about humans but he acted like
he was plugged into the same outlet as the coffee machine. His speech was succinct, no
hesitations, no oohs or ahs. There was a light nod to his skull but if you timed the nods they were
between 18 and 19 Mississippi every time. Every move was programmed.
Each time we met I fancied a big breakfast at his expense and he always refused the
waitress any consolation as she tried to Honey him into having the buffet or at least two over
easy. No thanks.
We talked extensively about what he thought was right and what I thought was
wrong. They were identical.
"You're known as a pretty conservative guy," he said.
Maybe that's what it said in my file. But he made the mistake of meeting me on
middle ground, not in the confines of the workplace where maintaining the proper attitude had
become an art with me. Now I was in Howie's, out in the world, where after 45 minutes I should
begin acting like myself.
He kept asking me how I could do such a thing, how could I write about my position
with such disregard. He then immediately went on to tell me about an associate who committed
suicide and some employee he hadn't seen in 20 years who had requested in her will that he
attend her funeral.
"So did you go?" I asked, wanting to contribute something.
He never answered but went on to detail the gloom of a death ward he visited
recently.
About the only words he aimed at me continued to be, "I don't understand what you
mean by this, I don't understand."
I had to tell him I understood that he didn't understand.
"And talk about understanding," I said drawing the line, "I've sat here for 1 ½ hours
listening to you go on and on with your morbid stories and I don't know what the hell it has to do
with anything."
"My mother is dying of cancer," he replied.
"I have to go to the bathroom," I said, standing up. Damn him for throwing a dying
mother in my face. I can't feel sorry about your mother or explain why you keep losing and
gaining weight dramatically, leaving your tailored suits forever awkward. They are never going
to fit. Keep your secrets. I should have kept mine.
What a Humpty. What a tough egg to crack.
Since our last meeting the Howard Johnson's has been converted into a Denny's,
Humpty has been promoted to leader of this part of the United States as opposed to
that part of the United States and I'm sure at this very moment, someone is listening
to him and his mother is dead.
FIVE COPIES FOR MY MOTHER
I felt like we were working on an underground newspaper.
It was around midnight when some friends of mine opened up the bank they worked
at to let me make copies of my original drugstore story.
The vice president wanted copies for the president, the chairman of the board and
the head of store operations and he wanted me to detail what I meant by each paragraph. I'd been
working on my presentation into the night. It would be flown to Chicago the next morning.
At first I was ashamed. I was doing this to keep my job, to smooth things over.
Rather than use the story as a tool to insight they took it as an attack and I better explain myself.
In short, I told the truth in the original story and now they wanted me to lie so they would be
happy and I could keep my job.
They gave me the day off to do it. I numbered the paragraphs. I burned the copies
off in pink, blue, marigold. Security was at stake, but then, this could very well be my last laugh.
Paragraph No. 1: "I've always despised work." Well, gentlemen what I meant by
that was there is so much more involved with work than work. You would have to agree, if
everyone just worked, productivity would skyrocket.-Oh man, and I underlined productivity and
put an accent on skyrocket.
It got worse from there.
And when I marched in to the Holiday Inn and put the stack on Humpty's place mat,
empty as usual, it was the first thing I've ever seen him eat. He was swallowing it whole. He
couldn't have done better himself. It was almost as if I had written it especially for him. God
bless him.
Then I handed him the cover letter, which only narrowly helped me save face. But
to him, it was a slap in the face and unacceptable. "It just ruined everything," he said. He read
parts of it aloud while I ate.
"This is not a story about your company," it began. "It is an abstract of bits and
pieces conglomerated over eight years. It is not an attack. That is a childish thought. It was
written to make people think, possibly see themselves and maybe hug their children."
He read this with the finesse of a blind man.
"I'm looking at the big picture through little eyes," he read on. "I'm looking at what
can be construed as madness. Then I'm bringing it home where it belongs. You know, I've seen
a lot of divorce lately, store managers included, and it's certainly not a company problem, but an
important problem nonetheless. Because isn't that the foundation, a family and a good job to take
care of them? Mr. ----------- said from reading my story he felt I wanted him to mail me a
paycheck at home so I could sit around with my family all day. I cannot argue with that narrow
of a viewpoint. I cannot deny that I work for my family first. That is the biggest and most
unselfish reason. If you do not agree with the fact that family is much more important than the
work itself, then we are different men and you will have to accept that. As will I."
"I don't know what's going to happen now," he said. And it was never mentioned
again.
FAMILY MAN
The word is we are all going to follow a trend leading back to family. Experts,
magically, have their fingers on the pulse of where we are going. It's coming from the same
people who believe current events shape a generation. For every pulse, every little undercurrent
you can put your finger on there are a thousand more triggering on the surface, right in your face.
But if this back-to-the-family trend is real, corporate America has to find some balance between
working and reading to our children, just as we find balance when we get home. We might rather
read that magazine that has been sitting on the end table for three years, but we are guilty enough
to know we have to give some time to the family . There is no room for guilt in the business
world, even though it is easily accessible and as close as the nearest man's conscience.
The president of our company was interviewed in a story for our monthly magazine
telling his life story in ten paragraphs. He spoke of the traveling and the time he had to spend
away from home to get where he is. "At one point my wife was home with four little ones in
diapers and it was hard but she understands the kind of man I am. I have to keep going," he said.
Don't give me that Popeye crap. It's a selfish bastard who says, "Well, that's who I am." Without
the concessions, you're nothing but a rambling power-oriented slob. If you have to do it, do it,
but don't be proud of it.
PRESSURE
The quarterly report is frightening, the economy is doing deep knee bends,
fluctuating, gasping. "We're gonna come up on top though, because we're the best," the chairman
of the board says. The best people, the best technology, marketing, service, hindsight, foresight.
"The shareholders believe in me. They trust me. Now don't anyone let me down. Don't make
me a liar. I sold you guys. If there's a depression, by God, you'll all have a job. The country
needs us."
And the word, the granite word comes rolling down through little cliffs and valleys
and finds the perfect resting place on the guy who is already hunched over, already preparing a
nest for the pressure to land in.
In a tribute to intimidation, the fist comes down one rung at a time. From the top
you can intimidate the vice president, then the regionals and district supervisors, all the way
down the line until you reach a manager, whom you also can intimidate. He's making 35, 40, 50
a year plus bonus. He's got a lot of zeroes to lose.
But it's the people below him, in any business, who are doing the actual work,
making the visible connection, generating the cash flow, and if what we're paying isn't up to par,
if the respect we're showing isn't human, if the hours we're cutting are putting the extra stress on
them, then they walk. The word stops. You can't intimidate people who are making $3 to $4 an
hour. Half of them are kids, and they'll just leave you stranded. They'll go home, have a roast
beef sandwich, and maybe after the weekend, if their parents insist, they'll go down the street and
pick up another dime an hour.
Judy went for an abortion this afternoon, maybe she'll be in tomorrow. Tina can't
breathe, she'll stay but she can't breathe. Angela is busy stealing small items. "I'm taking enough
to raise my wages 50 cents an hour," she tells her friends.
The fist opens into a soft palm. The manager is petting and stroking. What can I do
for you, I can't pay you more, but I can let you leave early, take tomorrow off, stand there. Just
please don't quit.
HAIL CESAR
Everything at work was a disaster: help situation, work load, seasonal pressure, the
company's unrealistic deadlines.
Even my sense of humor was gone. It was an off week and who walks in but my
new boss. He was one of the new breed, a man who had been in my position six months ago. I
didn't know him from the smoke blowing out of an old XKE Jag on I-95, but of course the
grooming more than made up for that. He looked like a sawed-off Cesar Romero in a $600 suit.
I could see his nipples right through it. The beefy little breasts he had accepted in his mid-30s.
And now that he's 40 or 41 he has accepted everything for a bigger check. Accepting,
accepting...
He put a cigarette out at my feet and toed it into the floor I had just had waxed the
night before and he proceeded to kick me while I was down. "No excuses, no excuses," he said.
I'm saying to myself, "Jesus, I've been working for this company for 10 years. I
don't have a blemish on my record and here's someone coming in and treating me like I started
yesterday because he started yesterday and he's been fileted by his new job and a glimpse of
power and there are people around me who I hired and are actually starting today and they're
listening to him talk to me like this."
When someone treats you like that you have to stop them. You have to have the
guts to say no, here's the line. But that's too scary, cause there's the door and you'd have no
choice, and once they know how you really feel you can never fool them again with your false
enthusiasm.
"I know, boss, I really think these are gonna sell and you were right, I've been
talking to my people more, getting involved with their lives and you should see the way they
work better for me and how they're coming to me with every damn problem they have. Things I
couldn't help them with in a million years. "My husband beat the crap out of me, my friend's
swinging in the courtyard, I don't know who my father is..."
"Maybe you could help them, sir."
THANKS
It was right after we had been through a crush of business and we held a small
meeting-just us store managers and Cesar. I sat there thinking, "He's going to open up by
thanking us for all the hard work we just put in and then forge ahead." But he left out the thank
you and it suddenly dawned on me that I never thanked my people either. It was spreading like a
disease. We'd get back on to the business at hand, never looking back, no time.
I went back from the meeting and halfheartedly thanked my people and made the
decision I wasn't going to become one of them. If I got to the point where I couldn't
stop it, I would leave, slip through the net like some kind of soft, speckled butterfly on a moonlit
night. An escape that no one would notice, but an escape nonetheless.
WHEN DEATH GREW ON TREES
I hate to bring up death this early in the story but it's such a great reminder of how
quickly we waste away.
"There's a dead guy in a tree outside my store," a fellow manager notified me. "I
knew you'd want to know. And guess what, he's wearing a pinstripe suit. How'd he get up there?
I wonder how long he's been dead?"
"You're asking all the wrong questions," I said. "The question is, what did the dead
man in the tree do for a living?"
This same manager's pharmacist had a heart attack in the store a few weeks later.
He died back in the pharmacy. He was in his early 40s and it only took the customers a few
minutes after he expired to begin pounding on the pharmacy windows for their prescriptions.
The other pharmacist was called at home to come in and carry on with business as usual. She
passed the stretcher with his covered body on her way in. What a way to come on your shift.
One dead one going out, one live one coming in.
Back in the pill box the floor was littered with syringes and scraps from the medics
trying to revive him. She had worked with the man for several years but was forced to kick the
debris away and say those famous words out to her mob of customers, "Who's next?"
"Me, maybe I'm next," the manager has begun to reflect. He's reassessing his life.
He bought an old corvette and he has asked for a transfer. Somewhere on the water would be
nice. "Who's next?"
MERRY CHRISTMAS
It was around the holidays. I arrived home late and my wife and kids were in the
driveway piling into the car to go look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood. I didn't want to
get in the car but then again I didn't want to ruin the simple outing they had planned.
"Why didn't you call?" my wife said sharply.
"I forgot, I forgot," I said, thinking no one should question me.
"How do I know you're not out screwing around?" she said.
"Damn you, Damn you," I yelled. No one should doubt me. After 12 hours in a
hole I had certainly dug for myself I thought no one in my family should ever treat me with
disrespect or be suspicious or curious. I take the abuse on the outside, I collide with it all day.
Please don't let it be waiting for me when I get home.
"Don't talk to me like that. Don't talk to me like that," I screamed. I was breaking
up, my palms cracked the dash and then my fists pounded and I demanded she stop the car and
let me out. We had only gone half a block. I ran with the car following in reverse. The
Christmas lights were freakish on the simple houses. My kids, who associated crying with pain,
screamed themselves. I had acted out such fits in the past for their amusement but they knew in a
second this was real. I was uncontrollable and delirious. Maybe I wanted my kids to see what
happens when dignity is gone; how close to the surface you are.
In the house, feeling helpless, I ran to my bed and cried like a baby. We ranted and
raved back and forth. "You think you're the only one with a tough job."
I'm doing the best I can. I'm doing the best I can.
After I dried up we didn't talk about it. We made love and looked forward to
Christmas. Like we always did: something down the road to take our minds away. I did it
myself on a daily basis, Oh, we're getting a pizza tonight or we're going to the dollar movie. I
can make it, I can make it, man. It's 2 o'clock, it's 3, it's 5. Where's my reward?
PERMISSION
It was a few months after my wife had broken her neck in a car accident (there was a
lot of pain, but she's intact), and we had been putting appointments off for quite a while because
of my work load during the busy season. So after the holidays are over and we're into the middle
of January I mail a speed memo to my boss. I put in writing that I need two personal days off and
the following is the phone call I receive.
"Shine!"
"Ah, yes, sir," I stutter, recognizing that familiar voice.
"What's the occasion?" he says, in a harsh baritone.
"What do you mean?" I'm trying to give him a chance to change his attitude.
"I mean, what's the God damn occasion? It says here you want two days off,
Thursday and Friday."
"Well, I have some personal things to take care of," I said, still attempting to shut
this down.
"Like what, what?" he must have been leaning back in his chair, "what, what,
what?"
"I have some appointments to take care of." I'm still giving him that third, fourth,
and fifth chance to back off. The longer I hedge, the more time for him to come to his senses. I
think.
"What kind of appointments?" he says quickly, breaking that little barrier of respect
with the ease of snapping pencil.
"Well," I hang for two or three seconds, "I have to take my wife to the doctor in the
morning and then we have an appointment with a therapist at . . ."
"Wait..does this have to do with you wife breakin' her neck? Wasn't that in the
spring?"
"Yes."
"Well, I can appreciate you wife breaking her neck and I understand you have to ..."
he hesitates.
"Listen what time are the appointments?"
After he said, I could appreciate your wife breaking her neck, I knew I was in
trouble. I should have stopped him. I should have said, this is personal business, pal. That's
what you rocks out there would have done. I was the prime example of the human body being 90
percent water. They had me completely washed, even if I was half a man, a quarter of a man, I
would have spoke up. If I was a cake God only used, like 1/16 of a cup of testosterone.
I said, forever cooperating, "10:30 we see the doctor and then at 1 we meet with the
therapist."
"What about Friday?"
"I have an appointment with my lawyer at..." I couldn't believe I was going to these
lengths, giving him the blow by blow, minute by minute details of my personal life after I'd been
working close to 40 days without so much as a Sunday off.
"Don't you know my boss is going to be in Miami Thursday and Friday?"
Relentless.
"I'm nowhere near Miami."
"Listen, this is what I'll do for you [do for me?]. You go to your appointments on
Thursday but I want you back on the job Thursday afternoon. Then, you call me and we'll see
about Friday.
Well, yes, sir.
I hung up and in hanging my head, looked down at my pants, scrunched up in my
lap. You know how it rolls up sometimes and it looks like you have something there besides
polyester, corduroy or denim. I knew there was nothing there. I knew it was burrowed deep and
I knew I was on the road to impotency. If I kept taking this crap, it would certainly turn to
polyester.
Wouldn't he get home and wake up in the middle of the night and realize what he
had done? Maybe my call was one in the middle of a dozen he had been making to guys to bitch
them out about overtime hours and he was on a roll. Perhaps he would mention the incident to
his wife over pudding and ice water in the kitchen at 3 in the morning. And the little mum bun
would shake him and say, "Siree, Siree, he's taking his wife to the doctor. She broke her neck.
Don't you remember you sent flowers to the hospital?"
"I did? Yes, yes, I did. I did the right thing didn't I, mum bun?"
"Now, tomorrow you'll call him and tell him how sorry you are."
I waited and waited for that call. I kept thinking he's got to come to his senses. I
didn't really have any appointments. We were going to the Keys but he didn't know that, the son
of a bitch.
The Alternatives
After that phone call my wife and I discussed our future at length. Would I only end
up in a job that would possibly be worse if I quit? All my credentials would eventually lead me
back to retail in some form. If I failed at writing, it would crush a dream, but what if I didn't fail?
What if I didn't try?
ORDERING IN
Cesar and I walked over to the gourmet deli. It was his turn to convince me to stay
and this time neither of us would be eating.
"Ten years, Jesus, you can't just walk away," Cesar said. But you can.
"What the hell are you going to do?" Cesar said.
"I don't know," I answered, and I kept on saying it up to the end because I thought
that it would be more meaningful than if I had some cushy job lined up with a relative. "It is so
bad I am leaving with absolutely nowhere to go," was the statement I was trying to get across.
But was it that bad or was it me, seeing an opportunity with writing to change my life and I
wanted to take these people down with me? I was making myself into a martyr and I found
myself saying, well, maybe this will help the other guys who can't seem to see any light. When
all the time I was just thinking, "Get me the hell out of here."
EXIT
"Let's sit down," Cesar said two weeks into a two-week notice. He had said it a
dozen times before but it would never be more meaningless. In all my strife to remain
level-headed and conservative, one thing I had to do was stop listening. I had to.
"You know, Terry," he said, doing acrobatics with the cigarette in his hand, "a lot
has been said, about me, about you. I just want you to know that anything I've said or done since
we've been working together was to benefit you. To benefit Terry Shine."
I was thinking about how it would be great to set off the sprinkler system on my way
out. Just Bic it in the back and then walk through the store with the whole place showering in
panic and then walking, no, strolling, out into the hot sun with a drenched back. Chilled by the
heat. Shivered by the changes.
"Damn, I'd feel better if you had another job lined up," he lit up. "I hope nothing
I've done has caused this. I'm not to blame."
I was more concerned with making a final employee purchase to get my 15 percent
discount. I had been making a list all day: diapers, legal pads, circus peanuts, Reynold's Wrap,
Bounce. I shopped in kind of a trance, saying farewell in seclusion to the people I really cared
about, dodging the old woman that would certainly want a kiss. I realized I didn't like people
anymore. Especially if they were old enough to have been around to develop habits, attitudes
and, worst of all, a philosophy. My heart was with the kids, the part-timers, the high-school
students, who always put me through the ringer. As a whole they had a low tolerance for
anything structured or stressful. They wept, laughed, screamed, cursed and trembled openly.
They intermingled personal and work life into Life, while we all struggled to keep them separate.
"My friend hung herself from a balcony yesterday. Her mom found her in the courtyard and she
left a list of five people she wants at her funeral. I was one of them!" Under makeup they
weren't giving up the little girl smiles that can cripple you. I hoped the next guy would take care
of them. Give them everything they want.
The Short Form
The first reaction is--what are you going to do, what on Earth are you going to do?
As if there were nothing outside these walls. Nothing beyond what you stumbled upon by
accident a long time ago.
I am free now, for what it's worth. I should make $6,800 this year, but there are
other rewards. I've been sticking my belly out in the sun for the first time in five or six years. It
looked like a punch bowl full of hairy milk but now it's browning and I'm trimming off some of
the fat. My psoriasis is completely gone.
My wife is fearful of my self-discipline so I've been treating myself somewhat like a
dog, a poodle in my case. I've set up a little reward system. If I write three pages in the morning,
I can get a drink of water. If I sell a story, I allow myself a beer. If someone calls me on the
telephone to commend me for a job well done, I'll allow myself to watch one of my favorite TV
shows. Sometimes it comes right down to the last second. But that seems to be about the only
kind of tension I can live with at this point.
I'm working on a book, a personal bizarre and brief capsule of my life and everyone
else's. I don't want to pen a classic, just one of those oversize paperbacks, 207 maybe 208 pages.
The type that lot of 20-year-olds are writing and selling the movie rights for much more than zero
and saying, "From now on, no one edits my work." That kind of book.
The Dream, the Reality
When I started writing it was pats on the back and you're the greatest and lunches
with people who just wanted to get a look at me for some odd reason. There were calls somehow
getting through to my unlisted number that ranged from the unbelievable, "My college professor
is using your work for examples in our writing class" and "a colleague of mine wants to finance a
book" to the unpredictable, "has Pete Hamill called you?" to the promising, "I'm working on
getting you a grant, your writing is dangerous" and "send your stuff to Rolling Stone, they'll eat it
up" to the inquisitive, "Have you read Exit Through Brooklyn?"
Well, Pete Hamill hasn't called me, Rolling Stone's not interested and I couldn't get
through Exit Through Brooklyn. In reality, I've only read four or five books in my
lifetime. There was John Cheever's short stories, Dispatches,
Shibumi (a book about caving) and A Fan's Notes on an editor's
insistence. I don't have any education to speak of, my grammar stinks and I'm incapable of
having a normal conversation with my fellow human beings.
But maybe these are all the traits I need to make it in this business. That and
participating in the real world: those places away from Cosmo, Esquire and just about every other
magazine that has declared itself smart enough to tell you what to wear.
Meanwhile, I may have a few thousand laughs before most people take their first
break in the morning but sometimes the laughing gets so loud it overwhelms. Because there has
to be something beyond the laughs and stretching into easiness.
I'm already beginning to feel an alienation from writing. That it's not an answer
either. It is another release that can easily become meaningless. I had associated writing with
freedom but I was naive to the facts that I'd continue to try to please, worry about acceptance and
continue to retract so easily when confronted. Certain characteristics had been battered awfully
bad. Things like conviction, confidence and will have been smothered for so long that I have
become someone you never want to be. A weak man with no one to push him around anymore.
I can identify only slightly and wrongly that a slave without a master is a frightening form of
freedom.
FAT CITY
There's a classic John Huston film called Fat City,with
Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges playing a couple of down and out boxers. Keach is an aging
alcoholic trying to make a comeback and Bridges is his young protégé. They hit
the ropes but refuse to abandon their dreams. At the end of the movie they're sitting at a
luncheonette counter and one says to the other, "Let's just sit here and talk," and the other one
says, "OK," and they just sit there and sit there in silence for what seems like an eternity, for what
seems like a solution to all their problems. They never say another word and the credits roll.
There's something very profound about that. I don't know what it is, but that's how I
feel these days. In that lazy place called nowhere, I've found a swivel stool at that counter, where
I can look straight ahead and let the credits roll.
The end.
SORRY
I've begun to feel sorry for everyone. I feel lost, but doesn't everyone else feel
miserable, trapped, overworked, underpaid and then lost on top of it all.
Since I enjoy my new found freedom I feel guilty. I want to help you.
I can't stand to be in a store, a bank, a restaurant, a bus, a train, a plane, a football
stadium, a neighbor's house or a flea market. Have I left anything out?
I have a phobia of uniforms. On a drive home I saw an old woman, still in her
smock, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, rearranging the sprinklers in her front yard. I had
seen her a dozen times at the five and 10, a bit bossy and always the cigarette. But now, right up
the street, out on her lawn, flying the colors, I couldn't take it. I raced into my house, where the
lawn is dying and I am hiding.
I feel most comfortable on my own property, hidden away. I do not feel a part of
you anymore. I used to be out there with you in such a hands-on position. I was a part of it.
Even while I'm writing here I feel my right to comment has ceased. This will be the last time I
represent anything. And when I admit I feel sorry for everyone, I know it is an insult. No one
needs me to feel sorry for them.
I'm feeling sorry for myself already.
I continue to yearn for simple shelter in family and children. I want to roll up into a
big house and live the way I believe instead of writing about it.
When I walk with my son in the light of afternoon he notices the obvious, that our
shadows are bigger than we are. He understands shadows. Maybe that will make the difference
for him.
I used to lift my shirt and tell my little girl to rub my belly and make a wish. The
other morning I stuck my new brown gut out and she looked at it making a face.
"They don't come true, do they?" I said.
"No," she said, turning away abruptly. There will be a lot of that turning away to
come.
DAYDREAM
I have sometimes wished I had a severe drinking or drug problem. That I reach the
point where my whole life is falling apart and all my family and friends are estranged. Maybe
my wife or one of my kids still cares about me, but that's it. I am violent, uncaring, selfish,
incoherent and newsworthy. I would finally force myself to go into an extensive, expensive
rehabilitation program. Then, once I got out, all the pressure would be off. No one would expect
a damn thing from me. I could get a little job, maybe caddy for a while and get away with it.
There'd be little remarks by the in-laws-he's doing so well. He's been off the drugs for over a
year now. We're so proud of him-the little things would be dramatic-he's content
just being around the house and reading magazines. Oh, he gave the children a bath the other
night. It was so sweet. We think he's going to make $6,800 this year.
JOINING THE WIND-UP BAND
I tried writing at home but everyone knows where you are and you're such a creature
in your own house that it leads to daydreams and irrational behavior.
I pulled my shoulder out when I tried to fit into my Cub Scout uniform. I was
thinking about how men try to fit into their Army uniforms when they're 45. It was all I had;
royal blue and gold trim, decorations galore. I'm having it altered.
One morning when I didn't have a car I got a sweet tooth so bad I ate half a bottle of
children's aspirin.
One morning I did have a car and I kept riding up and down the street in front of our
house. I got a speeding ticket for doing 30 in a 20 and I've never forgiven myself. Speeding
through the streets where my mailman rides his bike, where my children play with their toys.
Now I'm paranoid about it and when I'm driving the five-speed it's OK because I leave the car in
second gear at all times but when I'm in the automatic I stare at the speedometer trying to keep
the needle right on that 20. So far I've creased one basset hound's ear and almost run over two
kids. It's not safe to hang around your own neighborhood all day.
So I've moved my place of business to my father-in-law's house down the road. I sit
there with an old typewriter and a wall full of taxidermy over my head. There's a huge swordfish
that didn't get away and an open-mouthed trout, stapled to part of a tree for effect. You don't see
many trout in the trees down here but you should, the effect is breathtaking.
I sit there for almost 45 minutes and then my day begins. I wander around the
house. They're collectors, these in-laws of mine. The place is full of antique toys and gadgets
but most of them use batteries and there are never any batteries. Sometimes I think what a happy
man I'd be if UPS just pulled up around noon with a case of C's and D's. There are cups and jars
full of change about and I started taking a little every day and I thought what I was taking was so
small no one would ever notice but then again, I don't know how long I'll be doing this and even
at one coin a day sooner or later those cups will be empty and I will be disgraced. I do get caught
occasionally; there was the turtle I carved out of four sticks of butter. It took two days. And I
broke the seal on one of those collectible whiskey decanters. I think it was Jimmy Durante's neck
I twisted and broke. I'm very careful to keep most things I do undetectable or so disgusting you
wouldn't have the nerve to accuse me of it.
Most of what I do serves some purpose. They have these miniature mechanical
band players (bears and monkeys) and first think in the morning I line them up in a parade across
the floor. I space them so there's room for me and my brother-in-law's maracas right in the
middle. Every once in awhile I'll just step into formation. I used to wind them up but believe it
or not I couldn't keep up with them. It's just a comfort to know your spot in the parade is always
there, front and center.
My father-in-law collects antique cars and sometimes I'll make a whole day of
preparing my lunch and putting it into one of those big old-fashioned picnic baskets. I pluck off
one of the Gatsby hats from the hat tree and seal myself off in the garage with a spotlight for a
full moon. I spend the afternoon sitting in a rumble seat with a basket full of fruit and cheese and
a mind full of thoughts and ideas I'm never comfortable with.
LITTLE DREAMS
At the last advertising meeting I attended it was in the air about my quitting. All the
managers in the market were there and when questioned I spouted off about things detrimental to
the company-about money, appreciation, pressure, but I never once mentioned my dream of
writing. They sat there, some of them laughing at my stories, some agreeing, others not saying a
word, leery of who could be trusted. One, a market leader, spoke up for what a great company he
worked for. The room became quiet and he was quickly forgiven because he meant it, he truly
believed it and we knew it for a fact because he had said the same thing when he was drunk out
of his mind at a recent party.
I felt like a jackass. What was I telling them? What was I showing them and what
on Earth did I expect from them?
In walking away, I certainly wasn't setting an example but perhaps, unknowingly,
cruelly taunting them with their long-lost dreams. I did not for a minute think one of them could
go off and play for the Philharmonic or one could coach major league baseball.
But I do believe that in each of them is a worth that could break outside the killing
boundaries and find something more fulfilling. A place where it's not so hard to put your hands
on respect and self worth. They will not be the dreams-com-true of the movies we grew up on.
They will be little dreams.
A few days after the meeting I started getting calls from some of them.
One fella, who was being stripped to the bone, called me at home and said, "When
you talk to Humpty, you can quote anything I've ever said in private. Please, I don't care
anymore."
But I think he was just beginning to care.
A veteran said, "There are a lot of guys who are seriously, I mean seriously
considering doing what you did. They are fed up."
But what would they do? What the hell could they possibly do?
Even thinking about that out loud is painful and subject to ridicule. But it is worth
it, isn't it? The big aspirations blow away but it is never too late for the little dreams.