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.

Chasing Windmills

Continued from previous post…

Looking back, the corner office and all its trappings could be summed up via the old expression: be careful what you wish for. You’d gotten the carrot only to find out you didn’t like carrots. You’d grabbed the brass ring but it hurt like hell holding on. Climbing the ladder you hadn’t realized the rungs below would disappear until it was too late. There was no stepping down a few lengths to adjust, catch your breath, and assess the view. You had to keep climbing or plummet, which is exactly what happened. This was not to say certain ambitious and notorious colleagues hadn’t greased the rungs, expediting your fall; they had.

Came a time there wasn’t a safety net. No cushy job after the severance. No friends to catch you, even those you’d helped on their own ladders to the top. You try not to be bitter. What good would it do? Resentments were like taking poison and expecting others to suffer.

Enlightenment didn’t prevent you from occasionally trolling these pricks. Waves of resentment rolled in now and again, like the king tides in Marin, defeating you. Maybe you turned to the Internet, desperately trying to find an outlet for your vitriol. Mercifully, mostly, you never pressed send.

You remember the day you crossed the one hundred thousand dollar mark. When you were 30 years old, and recently married. You took Sarah out to celebrate, sat across from her in the restaurant, maybe even held her hand, speaking about the future as if it were a gift. If you ever were in love with her it was then, when nothing felt impossible. That night even drinking too much seemed fine. You don’t remember if you and Sarah made love but it hardly mattered. Intoxicated, the two of you. The next morning hangovers were pleasant. Lazing together in pajamas, drinking coffee, reading the paper, gazing at homes in the real estate section, day dreaming about the fantastic tomorrows both of you would share.

And yet, even then, you knew money was most of all a yardstick for your ego. Titles would serve the same purpose. Copywriter. Senior Writer. Associate Creative Director. Creative Director. Vice President. Group Creative Director. Senior Vice President. Executive Creative Director. Rungs in the ladder. Notches in your belt.

Perhaps after achieving success, as was accused, you became complacent. It’s possible. You had made compromises, believing certain situations required it. You must wonder about that now.

You were most content when your work got noticed, won awards and attracted people to you. One campaign in particular ran the table at all the award shows, garnering praise around the world. It would become the agency’s show pony, and you rode it proudly. The best whore in the whorehouse and you were its pimp. The man. Waiting for an elevator at work, a group of marketing students gathered behind you. You heard one of them excitedly whisper to his mate. “That’s him!” He was talking about you. “No fucking way,” the other guy said.

Way.

Being revered was beyond anything you’d ever experienced, more gratifying than your promotions and trophies. And it had come unsolicited. Out of the ether! For what seemed like the first time, you’d been noticed for greatness not flaws. No longer were you the fat kid punched in the gut and crucified on the diving board. You were special, with proof. You’d waited so long for that moment had fantasized about it. Comeuppance. By then the fantasy was less about smashing your tormentors and more about gaining respect and validation. You had no idea what it would look like until that afternoon by the elevators, when the world shifted, ever so slightly, favoring you.

You chased that feeling like the drug that it was, madly looking for it in every promotion, every raise, every accolade. It was never enough but the next one would be.

Relationships and family took a back seat. Any idiot could find a mate and have babies. Friends were transient. Parents weren’t there. Finally, you had something you could control. What you craved was conditional and directly related to your accomplishments. Your vocation became the most important thing in your life. You drank. You got high. But it was just a byproduct of success or a panacea to failure. Finally, you had a calling.

You were chasing windmills.

Coming Undone

The meeting progresses like a surreal version of the telephone game. Following Jon’s lead, each person picks up the baton twirling it their own particular way, spinning stories about frustration, despair and clownish behavior. Two women were brought to tears yesterday, one by a stressful work situation the other because of melancholy. In a fit of rage, another person wrote a flaming email that he instantly regretted. Someone else was not invited to a company function. Hurt by the slight, she questioned her self-worth, wondering why certain others made the cut and not her. Painful anecdotes, none remotely as dire as Jon’s, but all capable, if left unchecked, of creating chaos, of driving each one to the bottle. The members weren’t being insensitive, not intentionally. Mitch’s tantrum at home and Beth’s tears at work were big deals, to them. Different circumstances but the feelings are the same: anger, frustration, sadness and above all, powerlessness. Once traumatized by alcohol, now it was people, places and things that create the inner turmoil. The more sober one becomes the more he or she realizes how powerless they really are. Paradoxically, this is supposed to make you feel good.

As the shares continued, you reflect on events the last couple days that almost drove you to the brink. The ride home from SFO: You wanted to save your new company money and figured an old-fashioned taxi would cost less than an Uber. You were wrong. The ride had cost nearly twice as much. And on top of that the grungy vehicle stunk of body odor and god-forsaken foodstuffs. It was like sitting in a sewer and paying out the ass to do so. The coup de gras the driver’s digital payer was broken, forcing you to go into the house and find a personal check. While you didn’t make a scene in the taxi, you ranted and raved in your (thankfully) empty house. You’d spared the driver, but your anger had been so ugly and real. Wrath-like. Not just at the pathetic cabby at your company too, for wasn’t it their fault you had to pinch pennies in the first place?

The letter.

There was still the matter of the letter. The blackmail had come three weeks ago and counting, well past the 10-day time limit the extortionist had given you. Each day was laden with anxiety dipped in shame and sprinkled with fear. Even if nothing ever came of it, as you prayed, the letter had opened up a portal, revealing your defect like a cancer.  The gutless lie. Chaos.

To be continued…

A Chorus of Sirens

Everyone, you think, is some kind of addict. Be they active, recovering, or on the brink. Passions which are good become obsessions which are bad. People are self-seeking. This is the human condition, the result of Original Sin. Yearning. Craving. Lusting. Demanding. Wanting. Needing. Soothing. The seeds of addiction are there, have always been there. Many are able to temper these urges, denying the seeds what they need to flourish. But they’re still there. Waiting for a deluge, a perfect storm of misery or even joy… or just another shitty day. Then boom! Out comes the Hagen Das. The lonely housewife turns on the TV and never turns it off. An old man retreats to the garage for a smoke. Some concede to only a few addictions. Maybe they are harmless ones – a gardening obsession, collecting figurines. Or weird: like hoarding. Hidden from the world. In others the seeds erupt as soon as they touch a nerve, like weeds in a vacant lot. Out of control. You’ve met no one who has not succumbed to something. Drugs and alcohol are the poster children for addiction. Plenty else is out there.

What are some of yours?

Switcheroo

Remove the Christian gravy from AA and it’s just a program of substitutions, a replacement strategy for better living. Replacing barrooms with fellowship, selfishness with service. Honesty replaces duplicity. And so on. First and foremost, however, one had to replace the booze. Here Bill Wilson made a crucial decision: the surrogate for alcohol would be God, later amended to a Higher Power, as you understand him. The amending was due to the polarizing nature of God. Bill understood (correctly) most drunks; “self-serving in the extreme” would be put off “turning their wills over” to a deity, especially one from their neighborhood church. The amendment was added to make the program easy to swallow, like booze. To this day the God thing remains the biggest obstacle for people entering the program. Certainly, it was for you. To get there you had to concede that the bottle had become your higher power, literally bringing you to your knees. That was the easy part. You were powerless over alcohol. Duh. Replacing this Godhead, however, would not be so easy. It required serious magic from a talented magician… God. Even if you didn’t believe in Him, Her or It, the grandness of the plan made sense. How could it be otherwise and work?