Whiz Kid

After Mt. Vernon, Madison was a revelation. Surrounded by three beautiful lakes, the campus was an oasis of cool, the nucleus of a progressive city also the state capital. The population could not have been more diverse. Music and the arts thrived. There were myriad places to go. Bars galore. The drinking age was 18.

Once again, you’d done little to prepare for the move and so had to settle on a dumpy apartment with designated roommates: a Polish factory worker’s son from Milwaukee, Arthur and an exchange student from Thailand, whose name you couldn’t spell even if you remembered it. Though you had nothing in common with either of them, they were both diligent students, reserved in temperament, hardworking to their core. You hardly saw them, wouldn’t know they existed if not for the occasional aroma of Thai cooking or Arthur’s booming laugh. Once in a while you shared a beer. But making friends with your roommates was not a priority. You were only interested in two things: writing and women. Drinking seemed a foregone conclusion.

You expanded your proverbial horizons, joining the two campus newspapers as well as helping to create one of your own, a music-focused magazine called the Mad City Music Mirror. You saw your name in print every week and often received letters about things you had written. An audience! Your career as a professional writer had officially begun. Reviewing albums and concerts and films. Someday you would be a journalist for Rolling Stone. It was the perfect job, allowing you to write perilous prose, drink with abandon, and meet scores of beautiful and scandalous women. Highlights from this period included reviewing two up and coming bands, The Replacements and Violent Femmes. If not for your glowing praise, who knows whether either group would have succeeded? Such was your hubris.

In reality, you mostly reviewed local talent, including a hair band called Whiz Kid. Whiz Kid played Lover Boy and Head East covers for drunken sorority girls and the men who loved them. For two bucks a head one got three sets of music. Like any novice, you rejoiced in ripping them a new one. You were not up on that stage but you had a typewriter, which was mightier than any guitar. You poked fun at their cheesy name, ridiculed the matching spandex outfits and blow-dried big hair. Employing every bit of your modest skills, laughing out loud as you wrote. When the story got published you put it with all the others, in a scrapbook showcasing your diabolical wit.

Needless to say, Whiz Kid did not share your sense of humor.

Soon after the article came out, you stumbled into the lead singer at a club. The man knew who you were and he was plenty upset. He asked why you had so cruelly laid into his band. Was being a dick part of your job description? Your inebriated reply: No disrespect, brother, but playing covers by Lover Boy is what sealed your fate.

The vocalist did not punch you. Instead he hit back with something you would never forget. The reason his band played shitty music, he said, was in order to get gigs, so he could make rent and support his wife and new baby. None of the bars in town hired original talent unless they had a following. Whiz kid was unknown. Therefore, he had to sing Working for the Weekend because that’s what 19-year-olds paid money to see.

You had no defense. Because you had no clue the very real life this man had been leading. Struck by his truth, you were ashamed. From that moment forward, you abandoned your desire to be a professional critic. Whiz Kid had been working for the weekend, literally every weekend, in order to survive. You had no right criticizing them for doing so. Your cruel review served no discernible purpose. Save for hurting a group of people.

In light of this revelation, you pivoted. Deciding to be a copywriter, a form you were already familiar with given it was your father’s vocation. You wouldn’t even have to change your major, communication arts. You studied radio, television and film, took an advanced course in screen writing as well as continued writing for all the newspapers. No one could call you lazy. At night, between hunting down women and getting your drink on, you also began writing the great American novel. As well as an award-winning copywriter, you were going to be the next Jay McInerney. You’d found your North Star: the hard drinking writer. You would romanticize and hold onto this identity for decades.

In addition to liquor, women were key to your newfound persona. Chasing them down became pastime. Disenchanted by uptight female students, you developed a fondness for blue-collar girls. The former required too much effort. You’d once dated a sorority girl and spent weeks of nights trying to get past first base with her, which never happened. Cocktail waitresses had no such inhibitions. They seemed to want what you wanted, a few rum and Cokes, MTV, and sex on the carpet. You could leave at 4AM, without drama. Maybe you’d see them again. If not, it didn’t matter. Here was a contract you could get behind.

Juice

The summer after you finished high school. Having recently moved into a small apartment, stressed out by her own demons as well as yours, your mother indicated you find someplace else to live. She’d found evidence of your partying in the basement and could not take it anymore. Never mind you were still a minor in the eyes of the law. You had to go. Jesse was already camped at your father’s townhouse so that was not an option. Naturally, you chose living with a small time drug dealer you’d met in the park. You could not legally sign a lease but “Juice” had been more than happy to take $500 dollars under the table. It was a win-win. He’d even given you the flat’s lone bedroom, preferring the living room because “it was bigger.” Far from the threatening stereotype of a drug dealer, Juice was about as odd a character as you’d ever met. African American, he was also albino, which made him whiter than you. He had pink eyes. And he had lots of drugs, which in turn attracted lots of women.

Your mother met Juice only once but you will never forget her stunned expression, upon seeing this pink-skinned, black man whose apartment you now shared. Akin to a spit take, like something from the popular TV show, Laugh In or more appropriately, The Odd Couple. But mom was a bohemian and Juice was on his best behavior. The arrangement was allowed to continue. Not that she could have prevented it anyway. For the record, your father wasn’t made aware of your exotic roommate, only that you had one.

Those two and a half months became one long weekend. An array of females came to see Juice for pot or acid, often staying to tryst with you. Or they came specifically to fool around with you but later stayed to cop from Juice. Thus, you both shared a symbiotic relationship. Many things could have gone terribly wrong that summer, and arguably should have. Yet, from what you recalled it had been a total blast.

The Endless Friendless

Chasing friends was humiliating and losing them even worse. Yet, the pattern of loss was real. And you were the common denominator. Was Sarah right? Were you too sensitive? Are you an asshole? Your estranged brother seemed to think so. The letters from your father had been unequivocal.

It wasn’t just old friends. There were the people you had helped professionally. And now, when you needed a lifeline, they were ghosts. One man, call him James, lives only 5 miles from you. He runs an agency in San Francisco, whose parent company you’d gotten him the job at.  When his career had been faltering, as well as his marriage, you recruited him to Chicago and made him a partner. You saved him. James knows you need work and he knows what you can do. Yet, he’s not called you once.

Why?

You have beaten this horse to a pulp in therapy. You shared about it in AA. You discussed it with Sarah, your father, the man on the moon. Endured their subtle damning explanations, pointing at you.

People in the fellowship like you. What do they see that no one else does? Like most, you present the best version of yourself in AA. Was that it? Still, had your second best really been that bad? Enough to alienate Tom, Peter, David and James? Maybe your mother’s theory would explain this great mystery. You sure as hell couldn’t.

Your mom has been talking non-stop, about the harrowing and narrowing life of a 77-year-old woman, living alone. Brave yet often frightened, rarely lonely but leery of isolating, doing the best that she can. She’s thrilled that you called. She loves you. Goodbye.

Paragraphs from the Edge

ONE

“Hi sweetie!” your mom warbles. Abruptly, she asks you to hold on while she adjusts her hearing aids. A clattering of noises the dog yipping and she’s back. “Sorry about that!” Like always, her voice wavered between desperate and defiant. “These new hearing aids are supposed to fit my ears but they keep falling out.” She’s having a rough week, dealing with health issues, a sick dog, and the even sicker tenants at her assisted living facility. The theme was incontinence, to one degree or another. In the process of telling you about an old man who peed his pants in the elevator the call drops. Maybe she inadvertently pushed the wrong button. When she calls you back you do not ask her to repeat the story. You got the gist of it. Getting old sucked. Twenty-five years her junior and you were experiencing it for yourself. Bad eyes. Trick back. Chronic Indigestion. How long before either of you are pissing on elevators?

TWO

A chubby kid, you had no choice but to accept lesser status among your peers. It was the price of entry. Still, you once considered David your best friend. Sometimes he treated you shoddily. Other times he was nice. You were like his overweight girlfriend; he only hung out with you when no one else was around. You hated this injustice but you believed in the friendship. Underneath the bullshit you were certain David liked you. Came a morning you rapped on his door. You knew he was there. His bike was on the porch. But it was his mother who answered. Is Dave home, you asked? She replied he’d gone to the movies. It was a lie. You could hear him telling her to get rid of you. After that, things were never the same and the same hadn’t been that great in the first place.