Jacke Wilson's Blog, page 68

Thanksgiving Week 3: Life’s Sweet Partners

Oh, here we go! We’ve taken a look at the youth and the elders in my life (or at least the fictionalized version of it). How about Life’s Sweet Partner! Who else could travel through the world with Jacke at her side. That’s not easy!  Deserving of all my gratitude and then some.

I like the way the relationship is portrayed in my book The Race. But for the handful of you who do not own a copy of that massive runaway bestseller (sarcasm), here’s a free story. A ghost story of sorts, in which a very fictionalized significant other has a prominent role. (Really, when life is this absurd, it’s better not to go through it alone!)

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #22 – The Sound:

I fall asleep with my hand on my girlfriend’s hip. I awake with her hand squeezing my throat.

“Jesus!” I gasp after I finally pry her fingers from my neck. “What are you doing?”

She blinks, still in a fog, halfway between sleep and madness. “Huh? What…?” She shakes her head, coming awake. “Oh, sorry… ” she says. “I was dreaming that I was choking you to death.”

“Nice dream,” I say.

Her eyes drift shut. “It’s the SOUND…” she murmurs. “It’s making me…INSANE…”

I cannot blame her. My dreams are just as bad. Monkeys howling, trains derailing, slaughterhouses at night…

“One more day,” I say.

The sound is still there, encasing us. My throat tingles. With one hand I grip her arm; with the other I wrap my pillow around my head.

It does not matter. The sound pierces through.

 

Thanksgiving Week 2: The Elders

Oh boy. I’m really having a good time with Thanksgiving this year, but that’s no surprise. It’s my favorite holiday. Since yesterday was our day of giving thanks to the kids, let’s take things old school and bestow some gratitude on our elders.

Here are a few excerpts from stories about the generations above me.  My big sister, my older cousin, my old boss, and of course, my father and grandfather. Formative influences on me, but don’t blame them for that! All life errors are my own.

(Seriously – my thanks to all of them. Enjoy the stories!)

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #2 – The Spy Drop:

At the corner of the house, Joel stuck his arm up the downspout and fished something out. It was a plastic Dynamints box, with a white lid and a faded label, and it didn’t have any mints, just a single sheet of notebook paper, folded and crammed inside. He surrendered it to my sister, who removed the paper and unfolded it as we gathered around and peered over her shoulder.

The handwriting was printed with a red pen, childlike but decisive:

A bucket of water we will throw on her head.

Tina and I looked at each other and gasped. My sister’s mouth was set tight.

It was 1977, and we were at war.

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #5 – The Motorcycle:

I signed the document I could not read and handed my life savings to the stranger. He grunted and held out a silver case.

My cousin didn’t smile.

“Take one,” he said.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll insult him if you don’t. He’ll lose face.”

I took a cigarette from the case and stuck it behind my ear. The man’s mouth formed something between a sneer and smile, his teeth stained reddish-brown from betel nut. Outside the window, traffic poured by, noisy and chaotic.

I was now the proud owner of a motorcycle. There was only one problem.

I had no idea how to drive it.

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #16 – The Laundry:

But the best weeks of all were the ones when we hauled our popcorn wagons to carnivals and boat shows and softball tournaments and county fairs, selling high-margin products through a small glass window. (Even now, the numbers of cotton candy and popcorn and sno-cones astonish me. Cotton candy was two and a half cents of raw materials including the cone and the bag, sold for a dollar-fifty.) Those days had a lot of slow afternoons. Jerry and I sat on overturned buckets in the wagon, listening to baseball and waiting for the stray customer to pass by. At night we’d stand in the back pouring Cokes out of sixteen spigots, sending trays of Cokes into the grandstand, a team of twenty hustling kids filling those white pails with cash that Jerry and I counted and bundled until long after midnight.

Jerry loved cash, both for the success it measured and the freedom it bought. Fifties and hundreds were deemed “vacation money” and went into the bottom of the cash drawer, later to be transferred to a safe in his bedroom and used for winter trips to Mexico, where he traveled among ruins, dreaming of the past. When I ran the route I had to memorize a hundred different places to pick up cash—envelopes in lockers, ones and fives and quarters tucked into shirt pockets. As he was teaching me the route he swerved down a one-way street in reverse; a woman came running out of a house and handed him six dollars and twenty-five cents through the window, the cost of her husband’s weekly laundering.

I shook my head at the ritual. “Can’t you get them to mail you the money?” I asked. “Pay you once a month or something?”

“Let’s go get lunch,” he said, dropping the cash into a box he’d been filling all morning.

The cash came in handy for the lunch trips to Taco John’s, where he ordered the same thing five days a week (even now I know his order by heart), and the follow-up stop at the Burger King, where we bought a plain hamburger for his beloved and pampered dog.

And all day long I saw an entrepreneur’s mind at work. It was intoxicating, even though I was headed for other things. When college began I alternated school years of Great Books with summers filled with trucks and nachos and cash. And when graduation came, Jerry made me an offer.

“Ever think about being the ambassador to Mexico?” he asked.

I admitted I had not.

“Okay. Second best job: why don’t you buy the laundry?”

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #21 – The Speed Trap:

Stubborn? Yes. They both were, in their own way.

One was intense and fuming and desperate to endure the harshest that life had to offer. The other was mild and gentle and just as determined and unyielding.

One was like a rigid tree, battling the wind: proud, fierce, determined not to break, enjoying the struggle as a kind of test.

The other met the wind by swaying, willing to bend until the wind finally subsided. A different path to victory, certainly. And maybe a different victory as well.

In the car, on those trips in 1980, I didn’t really know this the way I do now. Then I was just a kid with his dad, and then his grampa, first eager to drive the golf cart and later looking forward to some powdered-sugar donuts back at the house.

But even at that age I was starting to sense a difference. Grampa did things I could not imagine my father doing. He played cards for money. He drank a little “hooch.” When we went to the Casino, the local restaurant known for its Friday night fish fry, he and my grandmother hung out in a lounge with blue lights, a well bar, and carpeting on the walls. We would venture in there sometimes to tell him our table was ready. His friends, who were a little faster than my father’s, would greet us with a cheer.

 

Thanksgiving Week 1: Kids

I’ve got a big December planned here on the Jacke Blog. So I’m taking a breath and celebrating my favorite week of the year. Thanksgiving! Time to bring in the harvest, start up a fire, watch a little football, and keep the kitchen bustling.

So today I’m giving thanks for children, who make all this work more fun. I love putting together a big Thanksgiving feast while the boys and their cousins are watching movies and playing video games. So awesome.

Enjoy the week of holidays, kids!

And here are a few stories to remind us all of the glory of kids:

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #8 – The Burger Car

The door to my house slams shut. My sons, seven and five, are running toward me, lugging books for the journey.

Time to put on my game face. Already my older son has exhibited a dangerous tendency to be as thinky as me, in spite of our best efforts to keep him young and carefree. I cannot let him know my thoughts. I cannot explain that the smell brings me bad memories, or even the concept that smells sometimes do this, because I know he’ll dive in. He’ll want to test the idea, he’ll feel it, explore it, measure it against his own experience, imagine it, think his way through it, and someday wind up as overwhelmed as me. Giving him a set of ideas like that would be like tossing a kid a pack of matches and telling him to go play on the woodpile. Actually, given his genetic inheritance, it would be like an alcoholic giving his son a drink at too early an age.

No. It’s tempting to share my ideas. But I can’t be that irresponsible. He deserves better.

My younger one, by contrast, runs free, psychically untroubled. Whether it’s due to youth or his disposition, he feels things without the overlay of logic and introspection that burdens his older brother and me. I don’t want to spoil that either, so I put on a game face for him too.

The doors open.

And Object #14 – The Bass Guitar:

Halfway through our first year I realized my kid had developed perfect pitch. It really could not have been going better.

But there I was. Night after night I sat in the chair, listening patiently to my seven-year-old run through the same songs. Twinkle in every possible variation. Honeybee. Cuckoo. Lightly Row. London Bridge. Mary Had a Little Lamb. Long, Long Ago.

All these songs, night after night. And me just sitting there, smiling and nodding and making mild suggestions.

The boredom creeping in. The tension building. Waiting for something new. But no. Back to the Twinkles. Variation A. Variation B. Variation C. Variation D. Honeybee. Cuckoo. Lightly Row…more Twinkles…

Until finally one night I walked out in the middle of practice. I went to my office, closed the door, and turned on the computer.

And maybe one last plug for Object #7 – The Keyboard, which ends with my boy at his finest. Many thanks to all these kids, who try so hard to be good!

It’s The Jacke Wilson Show! Episode 3 – The Worst Thing I Ever Did (Part One)

ONE…ONE ONE…ONE ONE… IT’S THE JACKE WILSON SHOW!!!!!

Oh, people! Episode 3 of THE JACKE WILSON SHOW is now available! This one is full of heartbreak and agony. Yes, that’s right, it’s The Worst Thing I Ever Did… confessions of real-life people as submitted by you, the readers. Also includes A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #15, The Coffepot, about what might be the worst thing I ever did. Let’s share the pain!

(We ran out of room on this one, so we had to stop. Plenty more worst things coming in Part Two. It seems our cup overfloweth with longing and regret here at the Jacke Blog.)

Oh, and I have a happy story sprinkled into the mix. We needed something to cut the misery!

Do you have a Worst Thing I Ever Did to share? Let us know! You can leave a comment or send me an email at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. Anonymity strictly preserved. (Read more about our call for The Worst Thing I Ever Did at our previous post. We’re not just going for confessions – we’re exploring why we think these are the worst.)

Enjoy the show!

http://traffic.libsyn.com/jackewilsonshow/The_Jacke_Wilson_Show_1.3.mp3

Download the mp3 file: The Jacke Wilson Show 1.3 – The Worst Thing I Ever Did (Part One)

Getting better, I hope! You can also find previous episodes at our Podcast page.

And subscribe to the whole series at iTunes by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE TO THE JACKE WILSON SHOW ON ITUNES

Let me know what you think! Thank you for listening!

Show Notes:

It’s the JACKE WILSON SHOW!

Episode 3: “The Worst Thing I Ever Did!” (Part One) – reader confessions, Jacke’s comments, a love story, and “The Coffepot,” a Jacke Wilson Object about the time he threw a spelling bee.

Credits:

Danse Macabre Hook, Tea Roots by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #15 – The Coffepot by Jacke Wilson

JACKE WILSON is the pen name of a writer whose books have been described as being “full of intrigue and expertly rendered deadpan comedy.” Born in Wisconsin, Jacke has since lived in Chicago, Bologna, Taiwan, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Mountain View, and New York City. Jacke now lives and works in the Washington D.C. area. Like his writings, the JACKE WILSON SHOW takes an affectionate look at the absurdities in literature, art, philosophy, great books, poetry, current events, hard news, politics, whatever passes for civilization these days, and the human condition (that dying animal). For more about Jacke and his books, visit Jacke at jackewilson.com.

Credits:

Danse Macabre Hook, Tea Roots by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #15 – The Coffepot  by Jacke Wilson

 

The Offering (A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #26)

And then something happened that changed everything.

I wish I could start the story that way, because that’s how it felt when it happened: startling, vivid, breathtakingly transformative. Even now it makes my heart race, the moment when I looked down and saw what I saw on our front porch, and the follow-up moment when I pulled the car out of the garage and saw what was there. But you can’t be jolted out of a world without there being a world to be jolted out of. That’s an awkward way of saying it, but I’m a storyteller, not an expert in metaphysics. Bear with me.

And then something happened that changed everything.

We’ll get to the something. But first, you have to know what the everything was.

#

We were renting a house on a cul-de-sac in northern Virginia. The purplest part of a purple state, in the section of territory that, viewed on a map, looks like it was carved out of D.C. Someone probably fought a war over this patch of land, once upon a time. Historic battlefields were everywhere, replaced now by highway interchanges and big-box stores. Progress marched along. Even decent old brick houses like ours were being torn down in favor of ersatz palaces with fake-stone facades, their walls rising up from the very edges of the small-sized lots.

One nice thing about living in a purple state was that my vote mattered. What was less nice was that my next-door neighbors put up an Obama sign and the kids who lived across the street shot it up with their BB guns.

We had left New York City so that our toddlers could play in a backyard. And now this? Young political activists? With guns?

I had not moved to the suburbs so my kids could be caught in the crossfire.

But we had signed a twelve-month lease, so what could we do? We settled in and kept the blinds pulled. Our kids could play in the backyard. Away from stray bullets.

Since we were renting, there were a few things we had to do to convert the house to something suitable for our family. We took down a hammock after it caused too many problems. (Hammocks are lovely for grownups. They can propel small children halfway across a backyard.) We drained the hot tub on the back deck out of similar safety concerns.

Inside, there was a pull-down ladder to the attic. I loved the attic: it was huge and roomy, and we could stash plenty of clutter up there. The one downside was that the owners had left a few things of their own: a metal rack holding some coats, a letter jacket, and a wedding dress in plastic, and four or five boxes of trophies and other knickknacks. I knew I should have been grateful that they had not left those things in the house itself. Instead I was irritated and tempted to throw it all out.

What were we paying for? Dammit, we were renting a house. We were not renting a storage unit.

It was an unreasonable position, but there it was. Those items were a reminder that we did not own this house, and I did not like how that made me feel.

It was frustrating, for example, that the owners had not trusted us with the remote control to the automatic garage door opener. Every time we entered or exited the garage, we had to park the car, get out, punch buttons on a key pad, and get back in the car. In rain. In snow. In wind. With the kids asleep. With the kids screaming. Every single time it was a pain, and every single time I thought about how temporary and transient our lives were.

Twenty addresses in twelve years. It’s one thing to live like that when you’re poor and living in dirty old apartments. The life of the struggling writer. Paycheck to paycheck, meal to meal, crummy surroundings, cold nights spent under the covers on a hand-me-down futon. It’s living! It’s living free! Hello, Bohemia! But this? Rent at this place was a sizable expenditure, and it was for a house, with a finished basement and a backyard. This was a place for grownups to live in.

And we were grownups, whether we liked it or not, because parents have to be. Granted, I was a baffled, confused parent, a father with no idea what fatherhood meant or how to handle it, with zero strategy other than the single tactic that as a 35-year-old man, I could present what seemed to small children like wisdom and authority. Eventually they would figure me out. For now, I faked being an adult. And it worked: faced with a three-year-old and a one-year-old who believed in me just as they believed in Santa, their optimism and expectations overcoming what was in front of their very eyes, I pulled off a great con, day after day after day. I bluffed them.

So then: a grownup I was, or appeared to be, most of the time. But this house did not make me feel like a grownup. It felt as if the real grownups – the ones with the stuff in the attic, and the ones in possession of the automatic garage door opener – had gone somewhere and left us in charge.

#

On a morning that spring I went to retrieve the kids, who were playing next door at the neighbors—the Obama-sign neighbors, not the camouflage-wearing junior soldiers of fortune. I left via our back door, walked across the deck, and headed for the gate that separated our two yards. Even from here I could admire their house, built to appear in Architectural Digest, which was literally the wife’s dream, or perhaps I should say vision. She had acquired two dogs, not because she wanted dogs particularly, but because their butterscotch coats matched the house and would look fantastic in the photo spread.

Her husband had told me this one day with a heavy sigh. I nodded as if I understood, but I felt like I was from another planet. Our house had two rooms that had no furniture at all, and a third that only had two beanbag chairs. Maybe Architectural Digest would have a Minimalist issue we could get in on.

I hopped down the steps and walked around the waterfall that no longer worked, hopefully through nothing my kids had done. And then, as I passed the back of the hot tub, I heard something strange. It sounded like growling.

I stopped in place, afraid to move until I heard what it was.

More growling. Like someone’s loud stomach, except more feral. It was an animal sound, there under our deck, behind the lattice woodwork.

Now I was afraid not to move. This was not a cat or a squirrel or even a dog. This sounded more beastly. Alarmed, I sped up, racewalking my way across the backyard and into the safety of the neighbors’ fenced-in paradise. The noise subsided as I got farther away, and by the time I rang the doorbell, I told myself that I’d been hearing things. Sleep deprivation can do that to you, as all parents know.

Inside the neighbors’ house, Tammy welcomed me into the kitchen and offered me a glass of wine. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon but I took one to be polite. She poured out a goblet for me and refilled her own, which did not appear to be her first of the day. Their nanny was supervising the kids, who were rolling down the hill out back. Through the windowpane, we could watch them in silence. It was so different from my house, where the four of us basically lived in one of the two rooms that had furniture and the boys climbed all over me, all day long.

I told Tammy about the growling. Her eyes grew wide.

“I meant to tell you. There’s a fox that sits at the end of our street and stares at your house.”

“What?”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Stares. All day long.”

An eerie feeling crept over me. We lived on a leafy street, a couple of houses away from a golf course. It felt like we were surrounded by nature. But that was not the same thing as living in the wild. Growling in the backyard? And now hostile, vigilant beasts, singling us out for scrutiny? Why would a fox be staring at us?

“Maybe we need to get out of here,” I joked. “Nature’s turning on us.”

“Maybe he knows you’re from New York,” she said. “Ha ha ha ha ha.”

“Ha,” I said. “Maybe so..”

She swung her glass in the air. Somehow she had already managed to finish it. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

After I rounded up the boys I walked them back to our house via the front yard, exposing ourselves to the weaponed mercenaries across the street but avoiding whatever beasts lived under our back deck. This was not good. Our house was under siege.

My wife didn’t believe me when I told her about the growl.

“It’s the sleep deprivation,” she said. “The other day I dreamed I was on a beach in Hawaii. Sand between my toes, ukelele music. Then I realized I was actually awake and staring at the checkout lady at Trader Joe’s. It was not a good experience.”

But later that day my wife heard the growl too, and panic set in among us both. I told her about the fox at the end of the street.

“Nature’s turning on us!” I cried.

“It’s not safe here!”

“It’s like a Stephen King novel!”

Wild theories burst out of us—ancient burial grounds, plantation ghosts, animals pushed out of their natural habitat by development, rising up and joining together and coming back to seek revenge…

This was more than we could face. Nature hated us. That seemed clear. Logical. Inevitable. In fact I wondered what had taken it so long. Or had Nature always hated me, and this was only the first time I had noticed? There were plenty of others out there – individuals and forces – who hated me. Why not nature?

#

A few days later we had a more reasonable explanation. At twilight we were greeted by a scrabbling sound coming from our back deck.

“Look!” my wife called from the kitchen.

I joined her at the back door. Through the window we could see a litter of baby fox cubs, six or seven or eight of them rolling around, batting each other with their tiny paws, gnawing each other’s fur, skidding into one another, testing out their high-pitched growls.

They were adorable but frightening nevertheless. These were wild animals, miniature and cuddly for now, but they were growing, and anyway their presence meant that older, more mature, more threatening animals were nearby. Their mother, for example, who apparently had been the growling protector we had heard as we passed by the hot tub, and their father, who must have been the stoic sentry who watched our house from the end of the road. Creatures with weight and girth and serious claws and teeth that could do vicious damage. Creatures who attacked. Hunters.

And we had boys. Boys who were young and vulnerable and plump.

I checked the back door to make sure it was locked—somewhat absurdly, as if these baby foxes would somehow manage to jump up and turn the knob with their tiny paws, but this is the kind of nonsensical thing parents do a hundred times a day out of caution. Then I went to get the boys out of bed so they could watch this special treat. A nature special, happening in real time right before our eyes.

The boys loved it. It was better than television, which they only got to watch 15 minutes a day anyway. This live-action nature show we let them watch for a full 35 minutes. (My wife has rules I do not understand.)

And we did it again the next night, and for the rest of the week. Every night at dusk we came to our kitchen, stood silently in the doorway, and watched the baby foxes tussle around.

It was fun, and cute, and adorable, and it felt safe enough, but I had a nagging feeling throughout the week that this was not sustainable. These things had claws and teeth and looked hostile even when they were playing. My oldest son had deer-in-the-headlights instincts when danger approached, and my youngest could barely walk without falling down.

Our backyard was off limits now. It was just not safe.

And what about the front yard? What if the family of foxes trotted around the side of the house? How could I protect my boys against a marauding litter of foxes, and an angry mama fox, and the father who would approach from a different angle?

We were housebound. Thank god for the garage: we could not have left the house that week without its security. We moved in and out in secret, like Dick Cheney.

But what did this mean? We couldn’t use the backyard at this house? Ever again? What were we paying for?

But really, what were our alternatives? To trap the foxes? Kill them? I supposed I could have the neighbor kids come over with their BB guns…no doubt they’d relish the task.

It was a sickening thought. This was not the country! We were five miles from D.C., if that. We were not barbarians. We were not going to slaughter a litter of baby fox cubs. The neighbor boys across the street would need to find other targets, like windows or recycle bins.

My wife called the humane society. Inwardly I congratulated myself for having the good sense to marry someone with such good ideas.

“They said they couldn’t come out,” she told me after she hung up the phone. “But they expect the foxes to move on.”

“Move on where?” I asked. “Move on when?”

“Days. Weeks. Months at most.”

“Months? And until then?”

My wife smiled. “We enjoy the show.”

It was true, every night we had a spectacular show. The days grew longer, the weather got better, and we were watching the adorable little cubs grow up.

It was educational, but there was something more to it than that.

I felt as if there was something shared among us all. Two families, sharing the same shelter. The fox cubs reminded me a lot of my kids, active, energetic, roly-poly, a little dumb in figuring out how their bodies worked. I could understand my boys a little better after watching these baby foxes. It was natural to wrestle around. It was normal. Healthy.

We were all growing together. We shared being alive.

Was I so different? Well, obviously, as a standard human, I was more than an animal ever could be—I could think, and feel, and be afraid.The mama fox growling as we walked by—I was way ahead of her on that. I could worry in ways she could never come up with. The experience – the thoughts, or the raw instinct, or whatever it was – seemed like something I could relate to, but it was fairly one-sided. She could resemble me, but I was miles ahead of her in terms of actually understanding why I was afraid.

And the father, keeping vigil? Standing by and observing as the mother gives birth and suckles the young? Developing a bond with them that I could only monitor from a close distance? I thought I could understand that too. But once again, what could that fox know about making the rent, getting the car fixed, trying to find a preschool that didn’t serve Oreos right before lunch? Nothing. He just stared at us because he couldn’t understand anything further. Dumb instinct, no intelligent thoughts.

That was my first bit of understanding, my preliminary analysis. It made me soften toward these foxes.

Nature didn’t hate us. Nature was trying to be us.

#

And then something happened that changed everything. (Now we’re really at that point.)

One bright, cool morning I opened the front door to retrieve our newspaper. Something was on our porch. Next to the paper. Right where we would see it.

It was a dead bird.

It was a hapless thing, mashed, twitching, killed but still warm.

My first thought was the neighbor kids. Had they shot this thing out of the sky, smashed it up, and deposited it on our porch? Were they that cruel? We didn’t have an Obama sign in our front yard. Why? Why? What had we done?

I looked for drops of blood or other clues. Footprints in the yard. A flash of metal behind the parked cars. Boyish laughter in the morning air. Some other sign. But nothing.

I glanced at the cul-de-sac. All was quiet. Beyond the fence, an electric golf cart zoomed past in near silence, then all was still again. And yet, suddenly something made me shiver. He was there. Watching.

The fox. My fellow father. He was watching me. I could feel it.

With my mind racing, I finished up breakfast, scrubbed three faces, brushed three sets of teeth. I got our traveling army’s worth of gear ready and finally loaded up the boys in our vehicle. Finally I backed the car out of the garage and stopped in the driveway. I opened the door and got out to punch numbers in the keypad. As always, I moved quickly, trying to get the door closed before any foxes or neighbor kids could sneak into our inner sanctum.

But today, after I opened the car door, I stopped and stared. There on the driveway, right where I always stood to enter the numbers into the keypad, was another dead bird.

Two dead birds in one morning. In the two places I always stand. Someone—something—had scouted me, knew where I would be, and had sent two messages exactly in the place I would be most likely to receive them.

Now I was sure this was not the work of the neighbor kids. This was from the fox.

A message. For me. But what?

I know you watch my babies. Don’t mess with them. Take this as a demonstration of what I can do.

I shuddered. It was mafia-like. A horse’s head in the bed.

But as I backed out of the driveway and glanced again at the cul-de-sac, a second thought occurred to me.

Maybe it was an act of gratitude:

Your house is protecting my family. Apologies for the inconvenience. Here’s food. I know it’s not what you usually eat, but it’s all I have to give you. Please accept it with my thanks.

Maybe it was both? An act of gratitude and a sign of strength? Was that what offerings were?

I did not know how I could ever know. But it hardly mattered. Either message was humanlike.

If our roles had been reversed, if it were my kids so dependent on the care of others, I’d have wanted to do the same thing. I was sure of that without even knowing exactly what that meant.

All day at work I felt odd trying to sort through my thoughts and feelings. I had never communed with an animal mind in quite the same way. Before, when I felt a shared experience with these foxes, I felt as though they had stumbled into behavior that mirrored my own, though in a more primitive way. Their minds weren’t as developed as mine, but their instincts made their behavior resemble mine. They became humanlike. If there was a comparison between us, it was aspirational on their part. They could never think like me. They could only marvel at how intellectually advanced I obviously was.

This was different. This was an intellectual move on the fox’s part that I myself did not quite understand. This was a fox – a beast, an animal – thinking through some issue in a way that I could not fathom. A growl or a stare might be instinctive. This had more behind it. This had planning, and acquired knowledge, and intention. This had thought and care. This was a deeper mind at work, drawing upon a kind of understanding and assumptions about communication that made me shiver. I was floored by the complexity of it, as if there were an entire animal world – the inner mental life of animals - that had suddenly been revealed.

Something was connecting me and the fox. I recalled how disorienting it was to be a new parent, trying to protect my family, knowing how dependent I was on others. And how much I depended on a few basic things like thin walls. That winter a storm had raged through our area, snowing us in and cutting off power, and for hours we may as well have been alone on the prairie in the nineteenth century, forced to survive for the night in the back of a covered wagon. I still felt the anxiety of that night, wondering how we would survive, if I had done all I could to make sure we would.

The fox had had his world undermined too, only it was undermined permanently. His home in the wild did not exist anymore, and he lived among humans in a way his ancestors had never needed to.

Each of us—the fox and I— were adapting, doing our best. The compulsions of fatherhood transcended our circumstances.

I was the fox. The fox was me. Our families needed us. We fought to survive. The generosity and hostility and fear: all that was part of it. We would both do whatever we could so that the young creatures in our care could play and grow and survive and thrive. And the fox had thought through this all and had done something about it, just as I spent my days. Both of us the same, him outside, me inside, thinking through, thinking through, thinking through.

#

In a few weeks the foxes did move, as the humane society had predicted. A few weeks after that we did the same, which everyone who knew us had predicted.

Once again we packed up our lives. As I piled books into boxes and threw out lesser artworks, I thought about how nothing is permanent, including ourselves, at least our bodies, anyway. What does that mean? It seemed to mean that all we could do was to feel whatever animated us—call it spirit, call it life force, call it a soul—to try to feel it as it expanded, and to try to make that happen even more than it naturally would. To push out and share whatever energy we had with the world. Emotions are ephemeral, yet somehow they last longer than things or bodies.

How did that work? Was there some pool of emotion that could somehow be added to? Some floating invisible storehouse of abstract feelings and ideas? It did not seem to me like time or individual thoughts ever really went away. But how did they last? Where did the past go? How did memories work when they weren’t residing in people’s minds? How did emotions continue beyond the instant in which they were discharged into the air? Maybe their effects would exist, would continue on in the world as the world moved forward, like canyons being carved out of rivers and rain, or those stones in tourist caves that become smooth and polished by hands rubbing them?

Are emotions and impulses and moods and feelings like that too? Do they exist somewhere? Exist in the form of the impressions they’ve made? Do they disappear forever? Or do they live on in a chain, transferred from person to person? From animal to person? From animate to inanimate? Vice versa?

We ascribe that power to love—if you give it away you get more back, you make the world a better place somehow, there’s karma, there’s a cosmos, there’s something that keeps track, there’s something that’s changed for the better—and that’s a nice thought. But there’s more than just love: there’s anger and cruelty and hate and greed and manipulation and everything humans can feel. There’s fear. And concern. And tender expressions of shared feelings.

And there are offerings to something larger than ourselves. There are those too.

That’s how I view it now. That’s the only way I can make sense of what I felt when I saw what the fox had done, those two gifts he had given me.

It’s this: that in sharing with the world an emotion, in drawing connections and living with the unexpected, in pushing and challenging and feeling everything there is to feel to the greatest extent possible, we realize we have more than love to share, just as a chord has more than one note and a palette more than one color. In connecting with the world, with all the humans and all the objects and all the animals, whether it’s my two little boys thrilled by the merry band of cubs on the deck or my own locked eyes with the proud and lonely father at the end of the street, in all of that emotion pouring out of us and pouring out of everything, there aren’t just bodies and objects churning through the world like the mechanism of a clock, and it’s not just love driving us all, there’s more, there’s more, there’s more.

There’s not just love but life. And it doesn’t go away. It’s there even when it isn’t. It’s there, it’s there, it’s always there, it’s always there and it will be forever. It’s there.

 

Oh people! It’s been a while! I’ve been distracted by our traipses through the absolute worst posts of the year (and the handful of best). And our writers laughing (Hello Zora! Hello, Georges! Hello, dear Flannery!). But the Objects are back! For those of you new to the series, you can find links to all the others at the 100 Objects page. Or you can run through this list:

#25 – The Equation – trying to prove the Great Unprovable
#24 – The Rope – falling up
#23 – The Passage - a literary genius and a wise professor knock some literature into my head
#22 – The Sound – two young lovers don’t believe their apartment is haunted…and then they hear a noise…
#21 – The Speed Trap - a boy, a dad, a grampa, and the long arm of the law
#20 – The Sign – the consequences of demanding a little more from the Deity
#19 – My Roommate’s Books – Philosophy welcomes a disciple with ambitions
#18 – The Monopoly Game Piece - want faith with that? 
#17 – The Shirts and Skins - three small lessons in shame, compliments of two small basketball players and their earnest coach
#16 – The Laundry – summer job turns into an unexpected (and somewhat tragic) love story
#15 – The Coffepot – smart kid throws the spelling bee, gets more than he bargained for
#14 – The Bass Guitar – a Suzuki dad goes electric
#13 – The Monster - a big surprise emerges from Loch Ness
Special Interlude – The Artist and the Music Teacher – old friend provides a coda to Object #7
#12 – The Tickets to the Premiere – taking my talents from Bologna to Broadway
#11 – The Bench – a day in the Chinese furnace provides an object lesson
#10 – The Spitwad – a science teacher with zero personality confronts a bully, with an assist from the heavens
#9 – The Intersection - Hamlet Dad goes to the movies
#8 – The Burger Car – a father orders burgers with a slice of Proust
#7 – The Keyboard - a music teacher pushed beyond her limits meets a child with dreams
#6 – The Mugs - while slicing up life into tenths of an hour, I get a sudden ray of hope
#5 – The Motorcycle - learning a life lesson from buying a motorcycle in Taiwan and learning to drive one (in that order)
#4 – The Sweater - a Wisconsin boy moves to the big city and pays a visit to a therapist
#3 – The Blood Cake - in which I recount my experience sharing an office with Jerry Seinfeld
#2 – The Spy Drop - a neighborhood war waged by five-year-olds takes a dramatic turn
#1 – The Padlock  - a doomed football coach struggles to survive a winless season

I’ve bolded the ones about parenting for those of you interested in reading more about Hopeless Dad bluffing his way through an entire childhood of two growing boys. It’s working so far! Especially when I get help from comedy gods!

Other things to check out are my books (not much about parenting in there, one is about politics for people who hate politicians and the other is about the law for people who hate lawyers. They’re comedies. Kind of like my Nietzschean feminist musical, with its bouncy tunes. Ah well. Sometimes creative freedom produces great results, and sometimes it spins out of control like a merry-go-round sticking a shiv into a cell mate as the warden wraps his tentacles around the John Hancock building to pull it back into the wormhole from which it emerged. (Down freedom! Down boy!)

Books are at Amazon.com and some other places. Podcast episodes 1 and 2 are here. Everything is free if you know how to work the system. The podcast is free naturally, and the books are free if you’d like to review one of them rather than spend the 99 cents to five bucks or so they cost. Just shoot me an email or leave me a comment and I’ll ship a review copy your way.

Take care, everyone. Be good to others. Connect where you can. And do try to go onward, when possible, and upward, where it makes sense to do so.

Brush with Greatness: Harry Shearer and Me!

On Tuesday I launched into yet another high-flying ode to creative freedom and the indie spirit. I railed against the curtailing powers-that-be, those nattering nabobs of negativism, wherever they may reside. I talked about my own experiences with indie publishing, and I cited the example of Martin Short and Harry Shearer, who found the freedom to create the all-time classic Men’s Synchronized Swimming sketch (“I’m not that strong a swimmer” and “I know you, I know you”) when SNL just let them go shoot the damn thing (which Harry contrasted with the rounds of meetings that had marked his experience in L.A.).

And then…a surprise! The comedy god and national treasure Harry Shearer stopped by! And he tweeted this helpful reminder:

@WriterJacke Although, to be honest, it got pretty damn hard to get something on air there, too.

— Harry Shearer (@theharryshearer) November 18, 2014

Wow! I feel like a king, blessed by the divine. (I mean that literally: when the creators of The Simpsons needed a voice for God, they turned to Harry.) And since my boys are discovering the wonders of The Simpsons Seasons 2-4, I am now Hero Dad, at least temporarily.

Here’s my hypothetical exchange with my boys, upon winning the Nobel Prize:

ME: Hey boys! I just won the Nobel Prize!

BOYS: Can we play Wii?

ME: No. So they’re flying me to Sweden to give a speech…it’s amazing. I won it for Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Peace, and Best Overall. It’s the first clean sweep they’ve ever had!

BOYS: When you’re in Sweden, can we play Wii?

That’s what my life is like. Except now, thanks to Harry, I had this actual exchange:

ME: Hey, guess who tweeted at me the other day?

BOYS: Can we play Wii?

ME: No. Harry Shearer!

BOYS: Who? Can we play Wii?

ME: Harry Shearer! Otto the Bus Driver! Principal Skinner! Reverend Lovejoy! Mr. Burns! Smithers! Ned Flanders! Scratchy!

BOYS: [mouths fall open]

And there were no more requests for Wii that day, because their attention was devoted to their dear old dad, suddenly a figure worthy of respect. It was as if Christmas morning had spontaneously broken out at our house…if Christmas morning also included Fourth-of-July fireworks, trick-or-treating, birthday cakes, and wishes that came true.

My little one jumped into my arms. The older one smashed into us. We group-hugged like the newsroom at WJM-TV after a successful seven-year run.

As many of you know, my parenting is best described as somewhere between woeful and pathetic (if “disastrous” can be included somewhere on that spectrum). So thank you, Harry! And by the way, five years from now, when my boys are teenagers and have decided they hate me and that I just don’t get it, my plan is to show them Spinal Tap for a little cross-generational bonding. So thank you in advance for that too!

And you know, I haven’t thought of this before, but I think Harry’s sensibilities have guided me in more ways than one. I don’t think I’d have written The Race without his political viewpoint (as expressed on Le Show and elsewhere). Here’s the passage where the Governor, having decided to run for office after destroying his marriage with a sex scandal, visits his wife to get her approval. Is this not Shearerlike?

But there was more: I knew how much this encounter meant to the Governor. I knew there was something deep within him that needed her to approve of his decision. She may have known it too. But she could not give it to him. I could see it on her face as he asked her to sit down and listen to a new proposal, and as she reluctantly sat across from the man she despised (with me, the unlikely witness lurking in the corner). Maybe it was spite, and maybe it was just sheer astonishment. Hadn’t she given enough? Hadn’t he taken more than his share? He had destroyed her present, and her future, and her past.

“You probably want to know why I’m here,” he began.

“I had hoped it was to see your kids.”

“That too! Of course!” he said. “Always love doing that, every chance I get. But there’s something else.”

“A change in the custody arrangement?”

“No…no, that’s fine. That’s for the lawyers. No offense,” he said to me.

“None taken,” I croaked.

“Tina,” said the Governor. “There’s a seat coming open. The First District. Lyle Larson’s retiring.”

“So?”

“I can win it, Tina. U.S. Congress.”

“Oh God.”

“It’s a wide-open field. I’ll enter as the front runner.”

I thought Tina might faint. She put her head between her knees and remained there, bent over, for at least a minute.

The Governor must have seen this before. He smiled patiently, occasionally tilting his head back and forth in a not-much-longer gesture, until finally she reemerged, her face red and slowly draining as she took deep breaths.

“We can do it,” the Governor said with a campaign smile.

“Are you insane?”

“You could win it too,” said the Governor. “If you run, I’m out. I’d never interfere with that…I hope you know that….Are you interested?”

She looked at him, still stunned. “This isn’t happening.”

“You let me know. But before the deadline, which is tomorrow. I wanted to let you know I’m filing. I came here to get your blessing.”

“You don’t have it.”

The Governor barked a laugh and looked at me because he needed someone to share this with. I smiled weakly. I was still standing. My hands were somewhere or other.

“Well, okay, blessing isn’t the right word,” he said to Tina. His face turned serious again. “I just need to know you’re not opposed.”

“I am opposed,” she said. “One thousand percent opposed.”

He laughed again, harder than before, in a what will she say next way. He looked at me, shaking his head. This is why I married her. Isn’t she hilarious? This time I did not smile.

He cleared his throat. “Now, there’s opposed, like in your heart, and opposed, like you try to obstruct. Like for the latter, maybe you’d give an interview, or—God forbid—endorse one of the other candidates.”

She stared at him.

“The people love you, Tina, they always have.”

She said nothing.

I was riveted. This was flattery, maybe. Maybe it was a way to express his love.

She cut him off. Her face was not as red as before, but she looked alive, engaged, present. Her eyes were bright and flashing.

“You are the father of my children,” she said in a tone that made my skin tingle. “I will not criticize their father in a way that hurts them. For their sake I will not participate in the kind of public humiliation that you evidently feel compelled to inflict upon yourself. You should disappear, Tom. You should hide under a rock submerged in a lake in the middle of a country no one has ever heard of. Run for Congress? You should refrain from ever showing your duplicitous face in this state again. Opposed? Every time I see you on television or see your photo in a magazine it kills me. The memory of who I thought you were has been ruined by the knowledge of who you are. And it’s not just what you did to me, Tom. It’s what you did to a lot of good people. Your supporters. Your staff. People who believed in you…

“And I, who loved you. Who shared your bed, who bore your children. I, who financed your first campaign. I stood by you through everything—until you forced me to live through what no woman should ever have to endure. When you ran for office I gave up everything to help run your campaign. For nothing. Nothing but you, Tom, your goals, your dreams. Have you forgotten? Does it mean nothing? Does it not count? Do I not matter to you?”

She took a breath.

“I gave up so much for you, Tom. And it’s gone. And now I live with pain and humiliation that I share with no one. Who could understand what it means to be your wife, to have gone through the public shame you imposed on me?

“I will suffer in silence if that’s what my sons need. But if you need some kind of redemption, a return to your past, you will do that with my silence and suffering. You will be contributing to my pain. I am barely alive, Tom. I’m lying in a grave that you dug, that you shoved me into. Now you’re back—why? To extend a hand? Of course not. You’re here to whack my head with a shovel and tell me that soon you’ll be heaping more dirt on my body. And…”

She trailed off. There was nothing left to say.

The Governor took all this in. He paused to make sure she was finished.

The grandfather clock in the foyer ticked. In the quiet room it sounded like a sledgehammer slamming down on an iron spike.

At last the Governor smiled. “You could run my campaign,” he said. “You’d be absolutely fantastic at that. I could pay you this time!”

He smiled in a way that denied the possibility that anyone could truly hate him. It was not arrogant and it was not entirely oblivious. He was just trying to see the positives here, that’s all…

Tina was not joining him on the sunny side of the street. She was still in her grave.

“Get…the…hell…out of my house.”

She was not a woman who swore often; the hell carried a lot of weight.

We said some quick goodbyes that were not returned. The door slammed behind us; two deadbolts hammered shut.

We walked to the driveway and got in the car—it was strange again to see the Governor next to me, in the passenger seat of the car I’d rented. I drove around the circular driveway and back down to the gate, waiting for the Governor to say something.

He drummed his fingers on his leg, hummed a little as we turned onto the road and passed along the fence that lined his property, picking up speed.

You would not know he had just been on the receiving end of a furious cannon blast of a speech. You would think he was a guy who’d just won a minor lottery, a hundred bucks on a scratch-off, say, and who was on his way to play some golf with a few buddies before coming home to mow the lawn, which he didn’t mind doing on a cool evening.

I listened to him hum, trying to figure out the tune. It sounded like something from a Disney movie.

Finally, as we reached the main road, he spoke.

“Probably best to keep that one out of the book,” he said with a chuckle.

Yes, yes. That’s got Shearer all over it. Harry, we’ll have a part for you in the movie. We’d be honored if you’d participate.

Everyone, you can buy The Race at Amazon.com. Or contact me at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com for a free review copy.

People, I have another Object in the hopper and should have it up soon (yes! finally!). Until then, Onward and Upward with a photo of Derek Smalls, patron saint of my attempts to play the bass guitar, as played by Harry Shearer, whom I’m today nominating as Patron Saint of the American Creative Spirit, He of the Dark Years When Creative Ideas Were Much In Need But Difficult to Execute Due to High Costs, Limited Tools of Production, and Mindless Groupthink on the Part of Stifling People Who Run Things.

May his blessed saintly energy guide us all…

Image Credit: theartsdesk.com

The Indie Spirit: Martin Short and Harry Shearer

My name is Jacke Wilson, and I’m an indie author.

Yes, there’s a stigma attached to this. All those people saying: “Who do you think you are, Jacke Wilson?” and “There is no check on quality anymore! You can’t just SAY you’re a writer.” and “The self-publishing world is like an agent’s slushpile times a zillion!”

I’ve gotten over it. Mainly for the same reasons I gave in my support of NaNoWriMo. What’s the harm to you, Madame Slushpile? Who are you to stop me from writing and publishing what I want?

And also…I do have eyes, people. I’ve been to Barnes & Noble. I’ve seen what the gatekeepers have let through. If anyone think they provide a check on quality, as opposed to marketability…well, I don’t know what to say.

When I first cranked up this blog I posted several tributes to what I called the indie spirit. These were links to people – famous people, celebrated authors or artists – who took things into their own hands. Ezra Pound. Dr. Johnson. Stéphane Mallarmé. Marcel Proust. I had others as well – ten or twelve, I would guess. Some were people who adapted to technology before the rest of the field. Or who wrote a book that was claimed to be “unsellable” or “unpublishable,” but who found a way to sidestep the naysayers and get their voice heard somehow.

I posted a lot of these because I was trying to talk myself into why self-publishing was a good idea. Every success story heartened me; I drank them in, in the way someone afraid of flying might stop off at the airport bar for “shots of courage.”

Now that I’m on the other side (two books, a podcast, a blog, and lots more on the way), I consider my efforts a success. Success on a tiny scale, sure. But tens of thousands of readers and listeners is far more than I ever expected. Frankly, it’s more than most of my friends who have published with traditional publishers have. That’s the dirty little secret of literary fiction: A few Mobys. Lots of minnows.

And my experience has been better than theirs! Most of them hate their publisher: hate the contract, hate the lack of support they received, hate the cover of their book, hate the changes they were forced to make.

I am responsible to no one. I rise and fall with my own decisions. It’s liberating. It feels creative. It feels artistic.

Everywhere else in my life I’m governed by forces out of my control. But in this realm, where freedom is everything, I have it.

My friends have been told that their lack of success on the first book means that publishers won’t want to see their second. Does this have anything to do with quality? Is this how we encourage artists and writers in today’s world? It’s a ridiculous premise.

Most of my friends are so dispirited they’re ready to give up. I’m just getting started!

But set aside all that highfalutin’ puffery. Save that for the intellekshuls, as my beloved Flannery might say.

The main difference between the old way and the new way is this: I was getting nowhere the old way.

I had an idea for a novella-length piece of work. Ready to go! Fresh paper in front of me! Blue pen all revved up! Just a quick run to the agent websites to see where I’ll be aiming this when I’m finished…

Wait, what? A novella? About a hundred pages? You’re telling me not to bother? Nobody wants them? Publishers won’t look at them? Agents laugh behind your back for being so naive?

But…I like reading them. Don’t others like short novels? People are busy, no one has time for a novel…Wait, why the hell are you getting in our way?

Writers! Readers! The decision to connect or not should be their decision, not yours.

Because, Jacke. Just…because.

So then what? Set down my pen? Or decide to bring it out myself?

I brought it out myself.

And whatever you think about its quality, I think you would have to agree that it’s a better outcome than setting down my blue pen altogether. (If you can’t even meet me that far, if you’re going to tell me that I should not even bother writing anything if it’s a length that traditional publishers don’t want to sell, then we’re just not going to agree. Thanks for stopping by. You can go work out your daddy issues or whatever is forcing you into the comfortable thought that People In Charge Know What’s Best For Us. I’ll side with the artists, and the people, and the barbaric desire to create, every time.)

Here’s where Martin Short and Harry Shearer come in. Remember the Men’s Synchronized Swimming sketch? It struck the young me like a hurricane. I did not think I had ever seen anything this funny before.

I hope you’ve seen it. If you’re over forty, you probably have. If you’re a comedy fan, you probably have too. It makes it onto a lot of lists. In any case, it’s here if you want to take a look.

Here’s Martin Short describing his first year of SNL and the short films in particular:

I remember after we shot synchronized swimming, I said to Harry, What do you think we have here? Do you think these pieces are any good? And he said, “I don’t know, but all I know is that in L.A. I would have had two potential meetings about an idea and here at least we’re shooting stuff.” So he was thrilled about that, I remember.

Yes! Yes! And to that I can say, “Stigma? All I know is that in the past I’d have spent a hundred hours writing synopses and cover letters to agents and this way at least I have actual readers.”

So who cares if Grandma’s memoirs go online? Let’s let freedom ring! Let’s let creativity rule! Let’s seize the power! And the day! And the reins! Let’s seize whatever we can get our grubby little artistic hands on!

You’re telling me that books can’t make it in the world without the stamp of someone official? That the author’s imprimatur is insufficient? I refute it thus, Madame Slushpile!

   

Onward and upward, people!

Today’s Comment of the Week: On Hamlet Dad

Wonderful Reader cducey2013 comments on A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #9 – The Intersection (aka “Hamlet Dad Goes to the Movies”):

“We’ll all get to the same place eventually.”

This certainly reminds me of the graveyard scene in Hamlet, as well as the general sentiment throughout the play of “you are dust and to dust you shall return.” But, do remember, Hamlet also says:

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will.”

Hamlet isn’t freaked out about death so much as he’s freaked out about life– he’s been “prompted to [his] revenge by Heaven and Hell.” So, rightly, this post also talks about how one is to live one’s life. Death isn’t the only scary part. . .

Yes! Life is scary too! Especially if you’re trying to avoid harming others.

For a lighter touch on parenting, check out Object #8 – The Burger Car (Proust Dad Goes To Five Guys) or Object #14 – The Bass Guitar (Van Halen Dad Stays Home). Or pick and choose your way through all the Objects by visiting the main Objects page or listening to an episode of the Jacke Wilson Show.

My thanks to cducey2013 for the Shakespearean gloss. It’s about time somebody classes up this joint a little. And speaking of class…

Authors I Love: Penelope Fitzgerald

I’ve written before about the great Penelope Fitzgerald, an author who I think gets woefully overlooked these days. Which is too bad: I love her beautiful, understated style, her deadpan sense of humor, and sneaky-great themes. You should give her books a try if you haven’t already.

But really, why do I like her so much? There are a lot of books I like, and a lot of authors I admire, but something about Fitzgerald resonates deeply with me. I think there are three reasons:

She was a late bloomer
She wrote short books
She was a great aficionado of failure

Those certainly hit close to home!

Yesterday I ran across a great article in the New York Review of Books about Fitzgerald, including this wonderful opening:

Just before Penelope Knox went down from Oxford with a congratulatory First in 1938, she was named a “Woman of the Year” in Isis, the student paper. She wrote a few paragraphs about her university career, dwelling solely on what had gone wrong.

Ah, Penelope. How can you not love such a person? I’ve been laughing all day, just thinking about it.

Here’s my own passage on failure (from The Race):

“Who’s he?” Tina said to the Governor in the foyer.

“My biographer!”

I explained that it was actually an autobiography – I was just helping him do some organization.

“Don’t sell yourself short!” the Governor said, gripping my shoulder.

I had not intended this comment to be self-deprecating – in fact it was something of the opposite. I wanted her to know that he had been writing his memoirs, that he was paying me – not that I was so drawn to his story that I, on my own initiative… I was not a vulture looking to feast on their marital carcass… but at that moment one of his boys crossed through the room we were standing in and disappeared into the hallway and the Governor chased after him to see how he was doing.

I stayed with Tina in the foyer. She clearly didn’t know what to do with me. I had no options but to stand there. Finally she invited me into the living room where we did not sit down but ventured into small talk.

It surprised me that she recognized my last name.

“Are you Mandy’s brother?”

“She’s a second cousin,” I said.

“And you live in D.C. now? What do you do there?”

I saw a flicker of approval, or at least curiosity. I was one of the ones who had left. Yet I was not such a success that she’d heard of me. I told her I was basically a lawyer.

“Basically?” She smiled faintly. I got the sense that she liked people. She hated her husband, but he was not in the room at the moment.

“I guess I am one,” I said. “It’s not something I ever thought I’d be.”

“A long story?”

I nodded.

She looked down the hallway. Now I saw her full smile; it dazzled me. “We’ve got time,” she said with a shrug.

“It’s strange,” I began, “to feel, every minute of every day, that you’re only pretending to be something that you’re not. I went to law school, I’m a member of the bar, I get paid to do the tasks that lawyers do. I meet with clients, go to court, conference with judges – and yet I never feel like it’s me doing these things. It’s not what I feel like I really am.”

She smiled warmly. “And what do you feel like you really are?”

“A failure,” I said.

#

The Race: A Novella by Jacke Wilson is available now at Amazon.com. A longer excerpt is available here.

Worst Thing I Ever Did? Had a Secret Orgy…

Wow. The confessions keep pouring in. I’ll save a few for the podcast, as I promised in the original post. But I’ll share some on the blog too.

Reader Anonymous writes:

Not quite sure why I’m doing this but I’m sure you can handle personal!

Indeed I can! Do go on…

I often refer to this as the ‘worst thing I have ever done’.

My pulse has quickened…I’m at the edge of my seat…the hair on the back of my neck is tingling…

I was in a ‘complicated’ relationship with a girl ‘R’, complicated in the sense that I was strict about not wanting to be in a relationship at this time in my life. I was sexually involved with a few partners at the time and was straight with all parties involved about this.

However, I spent most of my time with ‘R’, I was in a bad place and she took good care of me. She was very in love with me but, in relationship terms, we were not suited. Through the fog of roller coaster depression I could not see the lighthouse-bright fact that I was using her.

Oh no…oh no… I can see this one coming. There’s a pattern here, which fills me with ache. So often the worst thing we’ve done comes from letting down people who have treated us the best… you’re not alone, Anonymous! I’ve gotten dozens of these already!

So! We went to visit my friends in their cosy [location undisclosed] home where the two other people I was seeing were also staying. ‘R’ was uncomfortable from the start, I took great care to not be openly romantic with the others…

Whew! Dodged a bullet there. Good move, Anonymous!

…but we are an affectionate bunch who don’t see each other often…

D’oh!

…and even us cuddling up and watching a film was too much for her. She spent both days isolated in the corner not saying anything.

Oh no! This is not going to end well, I fear.

On the second night she went to bed in the attic early, I was frustrated at her for ‘bringing the mood down’ on one of my precious few times with this company and told her I’d be up later.

Okay, I think I see where this is headed. You flirted with someone else. Well, of course you did. You were feeling low, you were frustrated with R, and a little flirtation was in order. Maybe it even led to something physical, like a kiss on the cheek, that you regret now. Am I right? Don’t be too hard on yourself, Anonymous! R should understand a kiss on the cheek, given the circumstances. It might feel like this is the worst, but maybe you’re just being too hard on yourself.

(Am I right? Is that what happened?)

Very soon after, I went up to a bedroom with three others, barred the door and we all had sex.

Whoa!

She was upstairs devastated and I was downstairs sleeping with other people.

Argh! Well, look. I’m sure you handled it well. You told her, right? Told her what had just happened? Had a good talk about it… maybe a cry… came to some kind of understanding…

I then went up to join her and we cuddled to sleep.

Oh no!

How often did you think about this, Anonymous?

Not nearly often enough at first, that time in my life is a complete blur. Now I think about it often.

And what bothers you? Why do you think it’s the worst?

Because I didn’t even feel that bad about it. In hindsight I am distraught with myself but at the time I could see nothing but my own sense of entitlement to ‘happiness’ and excitement. Depression does that to people.

I now think about it whenever I encounter something that seems utterly unforgivable. I don’t consider myself to be a bad person and this made me realise that no one does. There are no bad people, just bad things.

Words to live by. You are definitely not a bad person, at least not as far as I can see. I think your description of your remorse is very human and full of empathy. Depression does put people in a bad place, but one doesn’t even need depression for things like this to happen. Sometimes people are in a selfish place because we have to try to make ourselves happy (if we don’t who will?), and life is hard to figure out.

We all make snap decisions every day. Some of them are poor – hopefully not too many of them are, and hopefully the damage is limited. But it’s inevitable that something, somewhere will go wrong with something we do. All we can do is keep trying.

We’ve all been there, Anonymous! We have all needed that forgiveness, and we’ve all been in a position where forgiveness is called for (even if it’s hard to give). I think you deserve it in this case, for whatever that’s worth.

Many thanks for passing along this story, which I learned from and found to be agonizingly human. And good luck with the rest of your relationships! If this is your worst, and nothing worse ever happens, I think you’ll be just fine.

Readers, I’m still taking entries! Tell me your worst! Leave a comment or shoot me an email at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. Anonymity completely guaranteed!

Previous entries:

The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done? Catfished My Significant Other
Confession Time! What’s The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?