"I Can Fend For Myself"

Originally Posted Wednesday, February 19, 2014

I am in the darkest and most horrible place, sick for days and now with terrible back pain, frail, weak, hobbled--and alone.  I keep thinking of the times I was sick when I was a kid, what it felt like to lie in bed and just be sick and taken care of, not needing to do much but get well, parents coming in to take my temperature or bring me a drink and to rub my back or head.  It wasn't quite a good feeling, but it was O.K.  Now I lie on a couch unable or unwilling to stand the pain of getting up, of standing and walking to the kitchen to get something to drink, snotty tissues piling up around me, the kitchen an infected, foul mess of pots used to heat soup and glasses and spoons and dirty bowls, the bedroom strewn with whatever clothing I have thrown off, me smelling like somebody else's butt.  It makes me think, to imagine, to project all sorts of horrible endings.  My friends and enemies, I fear, will feel good about this for I have always been a "strong man" about solitude and loneliness, self-sufficient, independent, not needing the help of others.  It is a hallmark of sorts.  I was born alone, so to speak, an only child who lived in the country.  Later, when we moved, I was around kids with big redneck families that seemed hideous in their makeups.  My only-child life was wonderful right up until it wasn't.  My parents fought for most of my early teen years and divorced when I was just beginning to drive.  I left my mother's home and lived in my car for a few weeks while showering at a friend's home in a trailer park (a 60'x10' two bedroom with two adults and three kids) until my father found out and made me move in with him in his one bedroom duplex apartment.  At this point, I wasn't hanging out with the homecoming crowd and had pretty much developed my loner's attitude.  I didn't date in high school but drove around in my car listening to music and longing for some unattainable love.  Yup.  I was that kid.  I was vulnerable and romantic.  I spent a lot of time at movies alone.  I began to read tales of men alone, men in boats, men in mountains, monkish men who were self-contatined and decided that was who I would be.  After college, I travelled around the U.S. alone, backpacked through wilderness alone, got sick alone, went to hospitals and clinics alone.  After that, I bought a sailboat and sailed it alone.  Weekends were spent with books and Coleman lanterns and a gas stove at anchor--alone.  I went to Key West alone and to California alone and to NYC alone.  I was working and when it got to be too much, I would stay at a little hotel on the beach north of Palm Beach alone for a weekend to "decompress."  I fell in love and was a good boyfriend, but my girlfriend of seven years wanted an open relationship, and I fell in love again for eight years to a girl without a true bone in her very attractive body, and then again with a woman who wanted fame more than me, and then again with a wife who left after a decade-long relationship.  Then I fell in love stupidly with. . . and then the craziness and once more for seven years. . . . A lot of good years, a lot of bad ones, but I never let my personality show it.  I was a steady Eddy all the time, always the same.  I thought.  But something must have happened.  I never grew up, I guess, I just got old.  And alone.  For days, I haven't left the house.  My mother stopped by for a minute to drop off some hideous chicken soup.  She didn't want to catch what I had, of course, but she called me every day to see how I was.  I kept thinking that the only thing that loved me was a cat that makes me ill, to whom I am incredibly allergic, and that seemed to me to symbolically wrap it up.  And so for hour upon hour in bed, I've thought about the end of life and how it will be, me surrounded by a putrid mess, miserable and wretched and smelling like somebody else's ass, unable to do anything about it. 

I have to return to the factory today, at least for awhile, and it will be good for me on some level just to be around people and to think of something more than my own demise.  And though I make the confession here, I can't make it elsewhere for there are a million people laying for me ready to take out their pent-up resentments and jealousies with a billion "I knew it"s and "I told you so"s.  "Your reap what you sew," they'll opine. 

But perhaps I'll fool them yet.  As they say, it's never over 'til its over.



Oh pour me another drink
And punch me in the face
You can call me Nancy
Every man wears a symbol
And I know I have mine
I've got my right hand stamped
In the concentration camp where my organs scream slow down, man How was I to know
That milk and honey flow
Just a couple states below

 Oh hook me up to the tank
And roll me to the door
I'm going where my body leads me
I can fend for myself
With what looks I have left
I'll put away a few
And pretty soon I'll be breaking things like Howard Hughes

 How was I to know
Milk and honey flow
Just a couple states below

Forgive me how it was
A place under the sun
Before the devil made me run
Run boy
Run boy