Bio

I̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶b̶o̶r̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶o̶o̶r̶ ̶b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶.̶ ̶ Sorry, that was Steve Martin. We weren't poor. Dad was a successful attorney with his own law practice at 25 Broadway in Manhattan. He was top of his class at Johns Hopkins and at Harvard Law. A very pleasant man, a walking encyclopedia, who didn't care much for kids. He cared very much for Mom though, and kids happened. Four of us. Our house was just like the Beaver's house. Mom wore dresses and pearls. She even looked a bit like June Cleaver. Dad read the paper and smoked Kent cigarettes. All that proper behavior gave me the hives though, so I went over to my buddy, David Callahan's house. Chaos ruled there. A Black Racer escaped from its cage and zipped all over the place and half-way up the walls, trying to bite people at every opportunity. Antique rifles were stacked in most corners. Many were loaded. A babysitter blew a hole through the living room floor and into the basement. We made bombs and blew stuff up. Mrs Callahan stocked the kitchen cabinets with Twinkies, chips, and all the wonderful “junk food” items that my mother never bought. If my house was like a library, David's was like a carnival.
College in North Alabama was an eye opener. I only went there because when my freshman year ended at the University of Georgia, they didn't invite me back. At Athens College, the entry requirements were not so tough. If you could fog a mirror, you were in. After four years of insanity dealing with all the social changes that Robert Zimmerman had been croaking heresies about while I was in a town straight out of the 1930's, I graduated in spite of it all.
But first, I lost a game of Ping-Pong to Howard Rau and was too bored to wait for my next chance to be up. Very stoned, impatient for life to start happening, I slipped around the corner and into a phone booth to call my college girlfriend who had already gone home. I asked her to marry me because I thought that was just what people did when they got out of college and I had at least another ten minutes before it was my turn back at the Ping Pong table anyway. That call set in motion a nightmare of events that included a huge church wedding, which I especially hated, and an old man three piece band that I hated even more. We divorced two years later.
Having drawn a low lottery number and with the Army breathing down my neck, I ran over to the Air Force recruiter and got myself signed up. DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. Four years in the bowels of the Pentagon keeping records on Red Chinese missile sites and Jane Fonda. I witnessed shockingly few examples of any kind of intelligence at all.
Four years of bachelorhood in a huge lakeside townhouse shared with three other bachelors was one big, fantastic party. I was like Snoopy on top of his dog house, dancing feet a blur. So happy not to be married, every morning was Christmas when the fog cleared and the thought of being single came rushing back to embrace me, like waking up a millionaire with Heather Locklear next to me (remember, this was some 35 years ago. She was hot!).
But fate had other plans for my time. Working at The Reston Times newspaper, where I had been for a year or two, Carla started working in the classified department and we hit it off. I fell hard and we eloped within six months of meeting. Now, 36 years later, we have two unique and wonderful daughters.
Ruth is 33, a professional assistant and show nanny for some rich people in Hollywierd. The old, ugly nanny has to stay home when they travel. Ruth's life is all about private jets, personal chefs, trainers, bodyguards, and multiple estates. Tough duty.
Hannah is 28, a gypsy hippie yoga instructor who has been on her own since she was 15. She just didn't come home one day, called me, and told me that she had rented a condo on the beach, was safe and happy and didn't need my support. We've always been close and she's always been her own boss. That determination has taken her all over the world, solo. Dancing on tables in a tapas bar in Spain, surfing the coast of Rio, living in South Africa, Australia, SE Asia...and now in Medellin, Columbia. She's such a breath of fresh air.
Largely, her mom is responsible. Carla home schooled the girls. Threw out the rule book and listened very carefully to the girls needs. No TV, lots of books, field trips, chickens, country living at it's best. I worked in a variety of roles. Rising up through the ranks of a national air courier business in the 1980's, software development and sales in the early 1990's.
That's when we moved to Florida. I launched a magazine: “New Homes and Communities” recognizing the benefit of chasing the new construction market in Florida. That went well and lead me to the proverbial “offer I couldn't refuse”. I went to work as a realtor for a large home-builder that had been a print advertising client. The money got crazy and we bought investment houses. The recession put an end to all that. I'm a genius Realtor, I buy high and sell low.
Now the dust has settled and we're relatively poor again. I still work for a builder, but only part time. We live in what had been our smallest rental, and life is very, very good. Sometimes it's more about what you save than what you earn.
All in all, an average, uneventful life. Like most people, we spent the first half of our lives acquiring two of everything we never really needed, and the second half trying to get rid of that stuff. Life is simpler now, my give-a-shit levels are almost bottomed out. I care a lot more about a very few things, family, friends, and a lot less about most other things. But we've never had to deal with tragedy, lost a child, faced cancer or major illness. We've just had a very long string of warm, wonderful days full of great food and lots of laughter... days that turned into years, a lifetime. Maybe that's not so average after all.

No Agenda...

Yesterday afternoon...

Two old dogs fill sun drenched patches of grass, like puzzle pieces fit to size, both lost in deep sleep. I've got the deck, a recliner, looking up into the oak canopy, watching birds chase insects as squirrels run frantic circles around a massive Oak, snug in its Jasmine overcoat. The little dog, always excited, circles the tree, staring overhead, daring the squirrels to come down. She pauses briefly to dart after a green chameleon before returning to her job of keeping the squirrels off the lawn. The breeze is cool, fresh off the inter-coastal. My frayed copy of Bukowski's “Women”, that I'm revisiting for the second time this year, sits on a rusting side table next to me. Carla is at work, as always these days, lusting for money she doesn't really need that badly, but this afternoon, I,myself, have no particular agenda at all.

I Never Left Your Side...

I Never Left Your Side...

Invite me to walk with you on a mountain path,

Show me the pristine meadow with the bleached bones of a Red Fox,

Bushy tail still waving in the breeze.

I'll be there with you.

Let’s do Yoga on the beach, inhaling deeply of the first beams from a rising sun.

We'll leave only your footprints behind as we stroll along, close, like before.

Little has changed.

If you have a party or eat the foods we both love, save a place for me.

I'll be there.

Maybe an oyster shooter, mussels in broth, fresh baked crusty bread.

You know I'll be there.

But if you find yourself grieving, regardless of the reason,

We'll grieve together, hand in hand, you can lean on me.

I never left your side.

Just because I no longer have an address in this world,

Don't think that I am gone.

I will live with you, through you, for all your days,

Until that time when we walk the beach together once again,

Leaving only the footprint of the waves to mark our passing...

hmh

St Ambrose Fair

Keeping my promise to Carla, I pulled on my big boy pants and went to the St. Ambrose Fair yesterday afternoon. By myself. It's an annual event here in St Augustine, held at a very small, historic Catholic church that sits on a shady 10 acre piece of old Florida land, complete with huge live oaks dripping with Spanish moss that goes horizontal in stiff winds. Carla would have gone with me as she has every year, but she had to work this time. That's all she does right now. Five weeks ago, Carla told me that she had been solicited by a former patient to come and work for her exclusively, Monday morning through Saturday morning, 24 hours a day in her home at the beach. A live in position. But Carla also has no plans to give up her Saturday and Sunday job with another company either, helping with client needs in a group home, 9am to 9pm on both weekend days. Pointing to the fact that most married people live together made no difference with her. She's got her hand caught in the monkey trap and I've learned not to waste my breath when her mind is made up.

So that's it right now, married life. My wife is gone all the time except for late Saturday and Sunday nights when she crawls into the bed with me, exhausted at around 10PM. But knowing what I like, and feeling guilty at so drastically altering our time together, when I see her for those few brief hours, she gives me a few toe curling, eye rolling blow-jobs, and $1,500 cash. Am I supposed to be upset or delighted with this arrangement? Anyway, this year she couldn't go to the fair with me and challenged me to go by myself. Carla is outgoing, an extrovert. I'm the opposite, happiest at home. When left alone, I go to work and to the grocery store, period. The dogs and I go out into the park behind our house, but as far as the car goes, it's work and Publix.

“I don't know how long I'll be working these two jobs. You need to get out and do stuff without me”

“Why?”

“Because it's good for you, you can't just stay here at home!”

“Yes I can, I'm happy right here. Go to work.”

But in the end we agreed. I need to be more independent and outgoing. Push myself to go to events, eat dinner in a restaurant alone, walk in the historic district downtown. She said that the St Ambrose Fair would be a great way to start, and I promised to go.

So there you have it. A crisp, bright Sunday afternoon found me walking around the church grounds in my big boy pants, along with about 3,000 other people. Did I mention that I hate crowds? Well, I hate crowds. Skirting the perimeter, trying to get to the Chowder booth with minimal human contact wasn't easy, but I did, and the line when I got there was ridiculous. About 3 city blocks long, winding a serpentine path all the way across the lawn and back toward the main entrance. All for a five dollar cup of their famous “Minorcan Chowder” that frankly, I make make better than they do anyway. So fuck that. I wouldn't stand in line if Jesus had returned and was giving out signed 8×10 prints of himself posing with Kim Davis. Hell, I didn't even walk across the street at our old house on the island to see Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt at the Amphitheater. Too many bodies in a tight space. Gingivitis and farts in the air. It was the same deal with the booth for the famous pulled pork sandwiches. Miles of bodies. Fuck that one too.

Before I even went to the fair though, I had told Carla that I would text her a few pictures of myself while I was there, just to prove that I went. “Just look for the guy in the pictures, standing alone, head down, no wifeypoo to cling to.” With that in mind and having given up on chowder and pulled pork, I decided to walk the perimeter some more and find the five best looking girls in the crowd. I would tell each of them about my pledge to Carla and ask them to pose with me, arms around my waist, head on my shoulder. Hell, their boyfriends can take the picture, proud that some old guy said that their girlfriend was the prettiest girl at the fair. I planned to text the pictures to Carla to show her just how miserable I was without her. But guess what? Three thousand people and no good looking girls. None. Zero. The entire crowd was divided into two groups intermingled: old people with oxygen tanks attached to their scooters or perhaps taking baby steps on three headed canes, or young heavy girls, boobs falling out of stained Rebel flag T-shirts, tramp stamps touching ass cracks, dragging a screaming three year old in a small dust cloud behind them. OK, fuck that idea too.

A local country band screamed over the din the whole time I was there, finishing up with a third encore of “Freebird”, and announcing that they were going to take a break. Thank god. The lead guy said that we were in for a treat. Nine year old Debbie James was going to sing. “You won't believe this little girl is only nine!” Debbie came up to the mike, adjusted it like a pro, and immediately started to sing the National Anthem. Three thousand people stood up, clutching their beers, and each other for balance. Old veterans saluted as others put their hands over hearts. Little Debbie didn't need a mike, she was a cringe worthy powerhouse of shrill patriotism that ripped at my eardrums like a school of tiny Piranha swimming on the wrong side of my eardrum, determined to break through to the middle ear.

That was it for me. I ignored the sea of piercing looks, did an about face and walked in the opposite direction toward the safety of my perimeter. Done, wrapped up after an excruciating 42 minutes of disliking myself for being a human, just like all the other mouth breathers there. The whole time, all I did was think negative thoughts about the people, the food, or lack of it, the music, and the “Get to Know Catholicism” booth.

My main take-away? The image forever burned into my occipital lobe of the ass of a 16 year old girl in yoga pants sulking along slowly three steps behind her parents, who apparently were being fattened for slaughter. Their daughter's ass, however, didn't look that way at all.

After a very pleasant, breezy, drive back home, with all the windows down, listening to Mark Knopfler, I was at my nest. No one there other than Rufus, Chica, and Sasha to greet me. Perfect. I went to my Volcano vaporizer, filled a balloon, and headed out to the deck. I kicked back on the lounge chair that had been waiting for me and scanned the lake, listening to the high cries of Ospreys circling overhead, staring down intently for a carry-out fish dinner to pick up and take home for the family...unless they plan to eat out alone.

All in all, the afternoon was good for me after all, a learning curve. I know now with absolute certainty that other than trips to work or the grocery store, I may never go out again.