Another post-newsletter day when I feel utterly exhausted and crawl back into bed after Sweet T. leaves for work. Marty (above) joins me for a good, long nap. We're not awake again until 12:30 PM. I have to fight the urge to return to my slumber. It’s the four year anniversary of my firing by SiriusXM and the Anniversary Effect is kicking my ass, amplified by the ongoing inability to land a job and the impact of stock market gyrations on my savings, AKA the (former) company 401K. Throw in Ukraine, the pandemic, inflation and a looming 60th birthday and it’s a good day to miss. The only thing on the schedule is a call with Bill. We've been texting back and forth to arrange a time. People used to just call and the person answering had no clue who it was. ”Hello?” meant "Identify yourself!” Mystery and spontaneity gone, now it’s I can't talk now – try me around 1 PM and the phone’s answered Hey, how you doing?
Me, I'm not sure. I keep thinking of how I misused the last four years post shit-canning. Did I go back to college, earn a degree.?Become a ProTools master? Follow the counsel of that old acquaintance who became a shrink and told me how I could embark on a similar journey during a marathon phone call, during which I dozed off? How embarrassing, to come to being asked Did you fall asleep? and to lie, pretending he didn't hear me snoring. Instead, I careened from a short-lived Audible producing gig to sporadic work for Merck to opening and closing an antiques store. The Audible work came quickly enough I thought This is it… this is what post-SiriusXM work will look like: a series of 6 –12 month gigs for decent pay and no benefits. But nothing similar appeared once Audible took their audio and ran. Then I lucked into audio-for-video work at Merck, driving to their various NJ campuses for a day rate that was generous but infrequent. When the pandemic erased THAT gig I kept myself afloat with the first premature dip into retirement savings, debated whether to use some to enroll at Montclair University (it was a college when I attended in the '90s). Ultimately, I decided not to return to school but to keep searching for employment. It wasn't until the store idea materialized that I stopped firing multiple applications a week into the void. Now I try to shake off sleep and the shit-canning dreams.
"It was nice working with you."
I'm not sure how many co-workers heard me say that but the standard response was What?!, as if they hadn't heard me. All they're thinking about is the weekend bearing down, a few more hours before they can exit the building and forget about the place for a bit. Then along comes this colleague they barely know, reminding them how tenuous it all is, how it could be them packing their shit.
What?! What happened?
"They cancelled our show. And fired us."
Holy shit. I'm sorry, man.
But I sure am glad it wasn't me.
How could it have gone any differently at SiriusXM? What started out a dream job quickly descended into its opposite, A Nightmare On 49th Street. The never-ending war between my co-host and myself, begun a few years into our teneure, was always going to lead us here. In case you forgot, things went south when I recorded her heaping abuse on me (I had the temerity to ask her to inform me in advance when she'd be out, so I could find a replacement).
"Look at you. You're disgusting. Who'd want to go anywhere with you?"
That was her response when our argument morphed into a heated exchange about her finding ways to travel sans me. She had this trick that always worked: she'd contact the promoter of some truck or car show, tell them she'd love to attend ("Anything's better than being stuck in a studio with you!") in exchange for airfare and hotel (and meals and booze) if only they'd contact management and ask for her. Because I was also our show's engineer the company would make the cost-effective decision of keeping me in New York to run things while my co-host got feted and pampered in Wisconsin or Michigan or wherever. They didn’t know she was pulling strings behind the scenes and it rankled. Not because I was eager to see Wisconsin or Michigan or wherever. But because we were supposed to be a team. And because I did the bulk of the work while she gold-bricked, getting all the perks and attention. I was naive enough to think we'd be equals but that notion disappeared around the third time my co-host shrieked You just want everything to be equal and can't stand when I get something you don’t! That day in the office, as she hit me with the same line, I finally shot back You just want everything to be UNequal. This is what enraged her to the point of insulting my appearance. She didn't know I'd started a surreptitious recording on my iPhone moments before. Somehow, I knew she'd try to make something of our contretemps, spin it to her advantage. I left with the parting line I know, deep down, you're an unhappy person. No sooner did I get to the bus stop when my manager called wanting to know what I said to have my co-host hauling me in front of HR.
"What about what she said to me?"
I offered to go back inside and play it for him. This is the guy that got us both the plum gig, the guy who now had to join us in a squirm-inducing HR meeting with his boss and the HR rep and my co-host. When she began spinning her tale about the horrible things I said to her I sealed my fate with the immortal words "Let's listen to the recording." She went white as a sheet and began fulminating, saying she'd sue me, what I did was illegal, etc. I knew she had no standing. At the time, New York was a one-party consent state, meaning only one party had to be informed of any recording between two parties. I was the one party. What I should've done is kept my big fucking mouth shut and waited to see how it played out. It would've gone nowhere, classic he-said, she-said shit. Instead, I unleashed the fury. My co-host took that fucking ball and ran with it for a solid decade, treating me off air as beneath contempt, not worth addressing directly, nor engaging with on show prep or anything else. Yet the mic would go on and she'd be laughing at my jokes, engaging in badinage, acting like everything's fine. It was whiplash-inducing. And it never got better. She kept up a level of disdain that was truly impressive. My early hopes for some sort of reconciliation proved pointless and I gave up on "moving past this". By the end we were locked in a bitter rivalry that kept busting out on air. She'd routinely mock me openly or push aside my questions while we interviewed someone. Repeatedly I'd entreat whomever our manager was that month (we cycled through them, no one wanting to take us on) with the same request: Break up this team, let me work with someone else or alone. Repeatedly I was told "No".
"You sound like the best of friends on air!"
No, not really. If you're listening closely, if you've been listening awhile, you can hear the rift. Only one manager got it. He tried. And soon he was no longer our manager. The rest of them didn't care how the broken relationship and its distance from our on air demeanor affected me. Wasn't I being paid well to swallow huge helpings of shit day after day?
Our last manager, the guy who's now VP of ALL Talk Programming, took a bad situation and made it much worse. My workload got tripled and suddenly we were being micro-managed, with constant emails and meetings. Our long-time producer quit the show when another opportunity arrived. We went months without a producer, promised we'd soon have a "great" one. When one was finally hired he had two roles, first as manager of the channel, second as our producer. But he didn't know about the second role until I answered his question "Who's your producer?" by pointing at him.
"You. You're our producer."
Apparently, no one told him.
He turned out to be bad at the job, too, constantly suggesting the most pedestrian ideas for topics, things we'd done to death.
"What about a show about people's pets?"
Did that. Did it just last month.
"Let's celebrate veterans!"
Did that, too.
"We should focus a show on truckers who are also bikers."
Again?
The only time I ever saw our "producer" get truly excited is when our fill-in – the guy who ended up replacing us – made "The phones light up like a Christmas tree!" Call volume was now the metric of success. The handwriting was most definitely on the wall and many mornings I'd awake in heavy dread, asking myself "How much longer?" It wasn't much. Two weeks prior to being shit-canned I'd sent a letter to the new overseer.
"We should discuss an exit strategy for me."
I know what you're thinking.
Why would you hand him your head on a platter?!
I've wondered the same thing. Did I really take a six-figure job and flush it down the toilet? It had to be that I'd reached the end of my tether. Management was no longer listening to me, not even a simple request.
“We'd like to be involved in decisions that affect us."
Yeah, right. As if you've earned that after a dozen years of solid service, a dozen years during which you never once received a bonus, unless you count Christmas cupcakes.
Soon after my "exit strategy" email it was all over. My co-host didn't even appear in person to be fired, she was a voice on a speakerphone. Apropos, considering how often she finagled to work from home long before the pandemic made it a thing. I begged the guy who fired us to tell me it had nothing to do with my exit strategy email. He said it didn’t, that this decision had been in the pipeline prior to that.
I know I've told this story before, albeit from a different angle, one more immediate. Four years on lends ample perspective, aided and abetted by my friend Bill when we finally get on the phone.
"You were miserable there."
I'd been lamenting the loss of full-time work, of being on the air, doing what I do best.
"You were miserable there."
He would know. He was one of the friends I'd bitch to on a regular basis. How they put up with it is beyond me. How Sweet T. withstood years and years of You're not gonna believe what happened today… is another question. It got to the point where we agreed to put a timer on my bitching. After half an hour, done. No more SiriusXM complaining.
Four years on I'm finally able to listen to our airchecks again without that feeling of being trapped. That's how it was at the end, like there was no escape from a job that paid my bills while crushing my soul. Under different circumstances – a co-host who didn't hate my guts, supportive management, an ad sales guy not out to get us, a President who didn't bring out the worst in our audience, sponsors who didn't find us insufficiently Christian – I might still be there. I like truck drivers, even the ones I don't agree with on a range of subjects. They're hard-working people doing a job most of us couldn't hack. When I see these long-form articles in the New York Times and elsewhere, the ones outlining just how horrible trucking jobs are, I think Where were you sixteen years ago when we were talking about this non-stop?
Better late than never.
Or, as they call in it the trucking world, Just in time.
THURSDAY
I got the Wordle in three tries. It's gonna be a great day!
My Throwback Thursday photo today is from Mardi Gras 1987. I'm seated on the doorstep of Dave and Donna's place in the French Quarter, cigarette in mouth, left arm around Whistle Bait, the dog. I look drunk, which sounds right. This was my first trip to New Orleans, my first (and only) Mardi Gras. Me and Kaz, helping my Dad and his third wife Karyn move to Memphis, taking the bus the rest of the way. We drove my father’s Ford conversion van, trailing behind him and Karyn in their yellow Ryder box truck. What a godawful time. I've written about that trip here. The low point? Outside Lebanon, TN in the rain, my father and I in the Ford, having a heated discussion. He wouldn’t let me and Kaz take his Dodge Omni (towed behind the Ryder) into Nashville to see the sights. He thought we'd get drunk and crash. Somewhere deep in the argument he shared his theory that I wasn't his son. He’d convinced himself my mother cheated on him with an old boyfriend and I was the result.
"It didn't matter to me. I still treated you like my own."
This theory haunted me for years until I had my cousin JD join me in getting DNA tests. Turns out my Dad was full of shit.
The high point of that trip? Actually getting to the Crescent City on a Greyhound after almost being left somewhere in Mississippi or Alabama around 2 AM in the morning after stopping at a C-store for drinks and snacks. I came out to see the bus pulling out of the parking lot. I ran alongside, pounding on the door until the driver stopped.
"I told you I was leaving!"
All my shit was on the bus and I would've been thoroughly fucked. But as the sun rose and we made our way over Lake Pontchartrain I exulted in knowing I'd made it and it was time to Laissezles bon temps rouler. It’d be the first of many visits to New Orleans. Now I’m headed to Güttenberg, which has nothing in common with New Orleans except for being on a river. When I get out to my car I see someone's stuck a WE BUY JUNK CARS card in my driver's side window. You have no idea how much this pisses me off. The last time someone did this I had my Mercedes-Benz 300D, the Turbo Diesel, and after a rain I came out to find the ink from the card had bonded to the paint. Nothing removed the transfer. Fortunately, that didn't happen this time but I still scan up and down the block to see if anyone else's car got a card. Nope. Fuck you. Why does it have to say JUNK? Why not WE BUY CARS, period? Part of me wants to call the number on the card and bitch these people out. But then they'd have my phone number.
Güttenberg Arts is throwing a block party June 26 and I'm running by to pick up some flyers. Sharon reached out Tuesday, asked if I could mind Sixth Street Vintage tomorrow, so I want the flyers for customers. After I spin by and chat with Matt I hit the Whole Foods for groceries. Then I'm back at the house trying again to make sense of all the stuff I own. Our house is stuffed with stuff. My stuff, not Sweet T.'s stuff. I would like to stuff all my stuff in a hole somewhere.
Stuff. Some Totally Useless Fucking Flotsam.
Okay, not TOTALLY useless. This is why I can't bring myself to trash it all. But my eye gets more and more severe the longer this stuff hangs around. If you visit us here do not stand in one place too long. You might be placed at the curb in time.
FRIDAY
Aerial View tonight is a repeat but a good one. It documents a 2019 road trip with Jim down to Memphis. Jim was due to record at Sun Studio with Mark Sinnis & 825, so I tagged along, recording as we went. Along the way we spend a night in North Carolina, hit Tupelo to visit the Birthplace of Elvis and wandered Beale Street. I'm trying to alternate archive and live shows so I don't lose my mind. Aerial View is great fun for me but it's also time-consuming if done properly. Some weeks I don't have the time. Today I'm doing my last stint at Sixth Street Vintage. Sharon's emptying out the front room, repainting and seeking a tenant. I'll need to get my shit out by Monday. It's been fun and I've unloaded a bunch of crap that no longer fits in our house or garage. I still don't know where I'll put what comes back from Sharon's. She's told me to arrive around 1 PM, she's moving things around before that. When I get to Hoboken and park in the usual spot, blocking her garage, she lets me know it might be a problem.
"I got my first ticket in forever. I never used to get tickets over here. I don't know how many parking authority types I asked about this. Blocking my own garage. They all said it wasn't a problem. Then last week I get a ticket. You might want to find an actual parking space."
I load my messenger bag and lunch into the store and go in search of a parking space in Hoboken at 1:15 PM on a Friday. A fool's errand. But a space appears by the Animal Infirmary, my former neighbor when I lived at 604 Adams Street. I park, put Sharon's Visitor pass on my dash and get back to the store.
"I managed to snag a space."
"Which side of the street?"
"This one."
"Oh. This is a resident only side."
"Shit."
I go back out, move the car. There's nowhere to park, though. This area of Hoboken is bad on a Friday. Street cleaning, either 1 to 2 PM or 2 to 3 PM. I circle around and around in an ever-widening radius and find nothing legal. Sharon hasn't told me if the Visitor Pass works on the Resident Only side but I'm not taking the chance. Did she say a parking ticket around here is now seventy-five bucks? Twenty minutes of fruitless searching has me throwing in the towel. I phone Sharon, tell her I'm putting my car back where it was, in front of her garage.
"Okay. When I leave you can have my spot."
I'd forgotten what this was like, the endless search for a parking space, the hours wasted, the distances traversed, frustration of "it doesn't quite fit". How did I stand it for a dozen years? It's only gotten worse in the fifteen years since I've been gone. There are many more condos in this part of town and constant foot traffic past the store. One finance bro after another streams by, talking loud into his Bluetooth.
"Yeah, bro. I told her thirty kay. She said it'd be more like forty-five. We're fifteen grand apart on this..."
I overhear variations on this shit all day. Self-important douchebags in shorts living their best lives. Not one of them stops in the store, nor do the young moms pushing double-wide strollers or, worse, rollerblading behind one. These are the people I was thrilled to leave behind when we gave up on the Mile Square City back in 2007. They were just beginning to descend en masse and they made my flesh crawl with their toxic combination of entitlement and cluelessness. The world was and is their oyster and we're all in a supporting role. I'm sorry, I'm not a bit player in your shitty movie, you self-involved asshole.
Ugh, maybe it's a good time to be ending my stay here.
After Sharon leaves a few potential customers pop in to Sixth Street Vintage but sales total ten dollars ($9 for Sharon; $1 for me) until 4:20 PM. Then a young woman with jet black hair appears and begins pulling items off my table. First is a Western Electric model 302, designed by renowned industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. The first self-contained (ringer and network circuitry inside) phone, this is a metal-bodied 302 in nickel-plate, marking it as a pre-WWII version. In 1941 Western Electric began molding the bodies of thermoplastic, metal being needed for the war. I'd long intended to install a rotary-to-tone converter inside the phone, as I did with the 302 in our living room. That one's chrome-plated and I wanted to do the same with this one but never did. I've priced it at $125, which is far less than you'd pay on a site like Old Phone Shop. But it sat in That Cave since it opened, becoming one of my most popular Don't touch! items. Kids were fascinated by the fucking thing.
"Honey, what did I say? Don't touch."
Now the woman with jet black hair and vague accent carries it to me.
"I'll take this."
She goes back to my table, grabs a bunch of vintage cameras.
"And these."
She asks about the lighters, do they work?
"Yes. I fixed all of the them. The Ronsons were made in Newark."
I lead her over to the lighters, get them sparking, show her the differences between models.
"Let's see... I have two hundred on it. I can do better. One fifty."
"The thing is I don't get paid until tomorrow. Let me think about that one. But I'll take this other stuff."
"Okay. I'll take ten percent off, so that's two oh seven. Cash or Venmo?"
"Oh, you take Venmo? I'll use that."
She pays me and I bag up her purchases. On her way out she asks me to say hello to Sharon. Sure thing. Before 6 PM rolls around I make another sixty bucks. It turns out to be a $300 day. When Sharon returns to drop something off I tell her about the woman with jet black hair and vague accent.
"Oh, her? She's a regular. Brazilian."
"She kept saying 'I better not tell my husband about this.' but she bought a bunch of stuff."
"Yeah, she gets high, goes shopping."
"Wow. She did seem to be a in a good mood."
Sharon leaves and I close up at 6 PM, heading home for pizza night and Real Time. I keep asking myself if I could somehow make it work at Sixth Street Vintage, swing the rent Sharon asked for, turn a profit. Earlier she told me she needs a tenant.
"I don't want to be in Hoboken all summer long, stuck in this shop."
"I would love to rent from you but I just don't see how I make it work."
"I think you're doing the right thing. This is a tough business. It's hard to make a buck. I think I'm gonna step back from this and just do the estate sales thing."
Yeah, I don't think I want to be stuck in a shop in Hoboken all summer either. I want to unload all the stuff that continues to suck up all my time.
SATURDAY
Today's our last visit to Saugerties. I need to retrieve my folding rolling cart and a Coney Island poster I had framed locally. There's also a stop along the way in Rhinebeck to pick up a vintage Califone record player/PA. I don't know what possessed me to buy the cursed thing but I dropped it off last year with a tube amp repair guy. He fixed up an old Harmon-Kardon Prelude hi-fi amp, converting it into a guitar amp. But we couldn't find a schematic for the Califone so he gave up on it.
"It'll be in a box on my porch."
He's out working on his boat when we get to Rhinebeck. The box goes in the back of Sweet T.'s Prius and we plot a course for A.L. Stickle Five & Dime, an old-time General Store we've (apparently) been to before. Sweet T. keeps asking me if I remember the place and I don't. We get to downtown Rhinebeck and park. It's a gorgeous Spring day and there's knots of well-scrubbed people traipsing the sidewalks.
"Look, honey. The white people are out in force."
Rhinebeck is hoity and toity, lots of upscale shops and little boutiques. The families come at you arrayed across the sidewalk so you have to step into the street to avoid contact. They're the same oblivious assholes clogging up Hoboken. But the general store is great. Right away I spot a display for Proraso shaving products, my brand. I grab little packets of shave cream for our upcoming travel and drop them on the counter. Then I spy a plastic butter dish. We need one since I broke our glass butter dish.
"Wow. Three bucks."
That, too, goes on the counter. Sweet T. locates a bar glass with the measurements on the side. Now I won't be guessing when I mix up Kyiv Mules at home. We pay for our purchases and decide not to tarry in Rhinebeck, despite all the signs for VINTAGE SALE and BARN SALE.
"I don't need more shit."
We were supposed to make our way to Bob and Melissa's to drop off our bags. They're still on their road trip and offered us their place while gone. But it's after 11:30 and we're due to pick up Todd in Saugerties and take him to lunch in Woodstock. Change of plans. We go back over the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge and hit Saugerties twenty minutes later. First stop is to pick up the double-sided Coney Island poster at the frame shop. John, the owner, tells me Saugerties is booming.
"The traffic! Every time I come here now there's a traffic jam."
Not quite what I want to hear. I want to hear the place is dead, no one's coming. This town will continue to vex me, won't it? Like the fact I can't reach Todd. We've made arrangements to meet, he's told me where he'll be. But he's not responding to my text or voicemail, so we drive to Main Street and park. Sweet T. goes in the health food store and I hit the gallery where Todd's rehearsing for tonight's poetry reading. He's surprised to see me.
"The gallery's closed right now."
"I know, I know. But I saw you through the window and thought I'd come in. I tried texting and calling. Do you still want to go to lunch?"
Todd is hesitant. Something's off.
"I have to go to the library, pick up a book."
"Sure, no problem. We'll meet you over there. Or do you want to ride with us?"
"No, I'll walk."
A few minutes later we're parked across from the library when Todd emerges. He doesn't hear us when we call out the window, so we shout louder. He finally turns, see us, and ambles over to the car, climbing into the rear passenger side. Sweet T. asks him what happened to his face. Huh? I hadn't noticed bu the right side of his face is banged up. He must've been turned away from me in the gallery. Todd spins out a harrowing tale. He was riding his bike through the Diamond Mills parking lot when someone must've backed into him. Next thing he knows, he's waking up several days later in a Poughkeepsie hospital. His bike, wallet and phone are gone and he can't remember what happened or how he came to be there. He gets back to Saugerties and finds the cops have his bike, etc., but no one can quite tell him what happened.
"Wouldn't the hotel have cameras out there? Couldn't they tell you who the hell hit you?"
Todd can't seem to piece it together. His speech is halting, his movements tentative. I've never seen him with a bike helmet on and now I wonder if he's got a brain injury. Asking him more questions quickly proves pointless, so we focus on the drive west to Woodstock and lunch at Garden Cafe. When we get to Woodstock and park it's obvious Todd's having trouble walking. He can't negotiate the sidewalk on the way to the restaurant and has to sit down quickly on a set of steps before he falls. Passersby express concern.
Are you okay?
I ask him if he wants to continue on or go back home. He wants to eat, so we slowly make our way to the cafe. At the table he's shaking a bit but seems to be coming into himself more. We order lunch and talk about a recent article concerning limb lenghtening.
"Yeah, these guys who think they're too short, this doctor installs a titanium rod in their femur and through remote control they make the rod get longer bit by bit. You can add three inches to your height. And it only costs seventy-five thousand dollars!”
We all agree that Prince would've never gotten this surgery. Then we finish our meal, pay up and get back to Saugerties. Todd is quiet on the return but invites us in when we arrive at his apartment. It's a small one bedroom duplex, kitchen and common area downstairs, bathroom and bedroom upstairs. We take a quick tour and say our goodbyes. Time to get to Bob and Melissa's. On the drive west we ponder the whole thing with Todd.
"How does that happen? That someone backs into him and no one can tell him what happened? It's fucking weird."
As with so may things Saugerties, it's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
"Do you think that's the last time we'll see the place?"
Sweet T. does. What reason do we have to go back unless to visit Todd? Even then we'd probably swing by, take him somewhere else. The change from last year to this couldn't be more stark. In 2021 it was our future. Now it's firmly, inextricably part of our past.
At Bob and Melissa's it's so quiet you can hear the bees buzzing halfway across their field. We let ourselves in, fire up the wifi and water the plants. It's almost 3 PM and we're not entirely sure what to do with ourselves before dinner and the art opening we're attending in the Rondout. It's not the same without Bob and Melissa here but we hang out in the backyard for a bit, repeating the same thing.
"It's so quiet here."
Yes. Where's the constant wash of sirens, helicopters, private jets, power tools, angry exhausts, nosy neighbors and morons flooring it up our street?
"It's almost TOO quiet."
As if that's a thing.
I would say we've become inured to the roar we live with day in, day out, but that's a lie. It still fragments my central nervous system in ways big and small. The sirens are the worst and I'm convinced they're mostly unnecessary. Our mayor – who's been the mayor since the '90s and once again runs unopposed – doesn't seem to feel it's a problem. But if I was throwing my hat in the ring it might be my priority issue. SOME FUCKING PEACE & QUIET IN WEEHAWKEN.
Sweet T. and I decide to go in search of food around 4:30. We'll have enough time to find a place and get to the opening by 6 PM. The Mexican place I've been to in the Rondout is permanently closed, so we survey the other options. They all have terrible reviews. Or we've heard bad things from Bob and Melissa. As we cut through Kingston's Stockade district we both mention "that Greek place". It's called Opa! Gyros and it's on Wall Street. We park nearby and go in for one of our best meals in recent memory. I get the grape leaves and falafel, Sweet T. has salad and spinach pie. Halfway through the meal I make a suggestion.
"You know we don't have to stay overnight. We did everything we came to do. Should we just head back? We can be home in a few hours."
Sweet T. likes this idea. We miss Roger and Marty and our home, even with all the noise.
"If Bob and Melissa were here..."
But they're not. They're having a good time down in New Orleans and we'd be sitting in their house going on and on about how quiet it is. Sweet T. agrees.
"Shit. I wish we'd thought of this sooner. Now we're driving back just to get our bags."
We head back, get our stuff, close up their house. It goes quick and we're on the road by 6:30, with plenty of daylight left. We're beset by the usual gang of idiots on the Thruway but back home by 8:30. Roger and Marty are glad to see us and the feeling's mutual.
“Boys, we made good time!”
SUNDAY
A day to sleep late, eat a big breakfast and ponder May Day. I w’d unite with the workers of the world to throw off my chains but I no longer work, unless you count ridding myself of stuff. I do not. To me, it's torture with no end in sight. But after Sweet T. and I take a walk down to Hamilton Park (above) and around the neighborhood I'm back at it, trying to winnow down the loaded bookshelf in the front bedroom. Again I'm struck with the amount of decision-making going on. What to keep. What to throw out. What to sell. Where to put it all. I know I need help with all this but don't dare ask any friends for fear of wearing them down to a nub. This is my mess, mine to clean up. If only I could do so with this can of lighter fluid and that Zippo. It would sure save some time.
MONDAY
I’m busier than I want to be for a Monday. First up, shrink appointment at 11:30. We talk about my fear I'm a failure. She points out what I've achieved, even during a pandemic. I’m only half-convinced. I tell her I’m angry at myself for not using the four years since being fired more wisely.
"I could've gone back to college. Or trained to be a therapist. Or something that would've gotten me further down the road to retirement than opening a fucking store."
Then I hit on a theory.
"If I didn't do those things doesn't it mean I didn't WANT to do those things? Isn't it self-filtering?"
Like this is some big revelation. But come 1:00 PM I’d prefer to be doing almost anything than what I'm doing, again emptying out a store – this time it’s Sixth Street Vintage – and cramming shit into every conceivable space in my poor, beleaguered Mercedes. I'm having flashbacks to the end of That Cave back in January while wondering where I'm going to stick all this stuff. There's only one possibility. I have to reclaim the office closet. Pull down the moving blankets I stapled to the walls back in April 2020, when I thought I'd need a home vocal booth for all the lucrative voice-over money I'd be earning. Or the audiobook work. Joke's on me. I used it once or twice to record auditions but otherwise it's become a dumping ground. Now I envision it restored to its former use as a genuine closet, this time with more shelves. Oh, yeah. It'll contain a multitude of sin.
It's drizzling as I dodge the finance bros and young moms with strollers while ferrying my shit out of Sixth Street Vintage. I text Sharon, warn her I might not be able to fit everything and may be returning. Somehow, I make it work. If the Joads had a Mercedes it might look something like this.
My shit is carted out to West Orange where I have a 3:00 PM with another Urologist, who does a "digital" examination of my prostate, then discusses BPH treatment options that aren't drugs with harrowing side effects. When I come back in June he'll stick a scope up my johnson, take a look around. Something to look forward to! He assures me the technology is far less painful than when I had something similar done back in the '90s. I'm already squirming just thinking about it.
Back at home the car goes out front, my stuff still inside. It can stay there a day or two more while I figure out where to put it all. It’ll take that much time.
Pink Floyd – Time
ART MAKES YOU SMART!
Sweet T.'s in a few upcoming art shows. Get out of the house and join us:
Sat. May 7 – Sat., June 11, 2022
Expressions 2022
NCA Gallery at the Shirt Factory
71 Lawrence Street – Suite #120
Glens Falls, NY 12801
Opening Reception & Curator Talk Sat., May 14, 5:30 PM
TODAY
6 pm ET: Sun Studios Or Bust
An Aerial View Archive from April 19, 2019 documenting a road trip with Jim Brown to record at Sun Studios in Memphis, TN.
FRIDAY
6 pm ET: Abort! Abort!
Another Supreme Court break down with Ken Katkin!
