A Lifetime of Tomorrows...

To me he was like the Marlboro man.

He was rugged and dirty and cool and I just wanted to be around him. I wanted to smoke like him and drink like him and have dirt under my fingernails just like him. I wanted to have scabs like him and ripped jeans like him and, when no one was looking, I wanted to swear like him. I loved it when he called me “buddy” or “champ” and when he ruffled my hair with his calloused hands. And the few times that he put me on his shoulders I swear I could almost touch the moon.

I can’t really say that I remember him leaving but I definitely remember the void it left having him gone. But it wasn’t because I had endless memories of being pushed on the swings or building model racecars with him, it was because I had so few memories of him that I put so much stock in the ones that I had. I wanted new memories, sometimes more than I wanted to wake up in the morning but suddenly, with no one really caring what I thought of him, he was gone. Here today, gone tomorrow.

And all the tomorrows after that.

I thought of him a lot over the years that followed. I began to grow up and started learning the lessons of life and love and the unforgiving nature of the world. I wondered where he went and why he left. I wondered if it was because of me, or because of him, or because the responsibilities that having a son were just too much to handle. I wondered what he was doing. I wondered if he was still rugged and dirty and cool. I wondered if he was still like the Marlboro man.

I called him from time to time over the years, my ears to the street listening for the sound of his footsteps getting closer. I would catch glimpses of him in crowds of people, in store windows, down grocery store aisles, but I could never quite reach him. I missed him some days, hated him on others but no matter how badly I wanted to forget him, I never quite could.

I’m far from the little kid that I once was but every now and again when my mind quiets and the volume of life comes down a few levels, he comes into my mind. I mostly wonder what happened to him, if he remarried or had another son, or if whatever plagued him all those years ago still plagues him today. Every so often I type his name into the search field on the Google home page and stare at the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button. But I never click it though, an act that I can at least partially attribute to the fact that I guess I’m never really feeling all that lucky.

Early in the morning yesterday, while the sun still struggled to find its place among the clouds, I got an email from and old girlfriend of his. She told me that over the course of the last few years he’d been evicted from four apartments, that the only thing that overshadowed his drinking problem was his gambling addiction, that he had severely burned his leg in a work related accident, and that he owed a lot of people a lot of money. She said that she worried about him and that he was such a sweet guy but he just couldn’t figure it out.

I finished reading the email and looked at the ground, staring into the grey concrete swirls that made up the train station. Images of him sitting on a bar stool in a rundown tavern, smoke drifting up from the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, staring into the digital face of the poker machine in front of him. For an instant my mind flashed back to when I was high above the earth, perched on his shoulders, a thousand feet tall. I never wanted to come down. Ever.

As my thoughts drifted back to the present, my eyes focused on the crushed butt of a Marlboro Light lying on the concrete. I lifted my head and stared into the crowd of people that had gathered to wait for the train. I surveyed them, my eyes scanning back and forth until I saw him. He was far from me with his back turned, his cowboy hat tipped, walking away into the rising sun one last time.

When the Heavens Cry...

The rainclouds set in around the skyscrapers of Chicago and the lack of summer weather has the heavens crying for a change. The city streets are covered in a tidal wave of umbrellas as wet loafers, galoshes, and the people wearing them run for cover through the morning mist.

But even despite the rain, it’s so good to be home.

It’s amazing to me to look out at the city through the glass and steel and concrete playground that I’ve worked out of over the last seven years and see life from atop the clouds. I see Chicago’s neighborhoods laid out before me, ripe with opportunities, beckoning to anyone with a dream to come and spin the wheel of success. It’s a good life for a mostly good man in a city that’s nothing short of all good.

But as I traveled the country over the last few years I’d always had this nagging feeling that I was missing out on something. I was always wondering where I was heading and what I was looking for and if, in fact, I would ever find it. The scenery changed a lot for me. The concrete jungle of Chicago gave way to the sweet tea and lazy days of the South which eventually gave way to the dilapidated row homes of the once thriving Charm City. I spent the better part of each month running to catch planes and losing myself in thoughts of buying a one way ticket and just disappearing. But not because I wanted to run or because life was too hard or because I just couldn’t handle the pressures of accountability, I dreamed of a one way ticket because, for once in my life, I just wanted to live. I wanted to live the life that I dreamed about when I was a kid. I wanted to finally find Neverland and hang out with the Lost Boys and Wendy and John and Michael. I wanted to sit on the beaches of an island far, far away from the perils of adult life, and emphatically wish upon a star. Because, as I suppose we all do, I had oh so many wishes.

Author Louise J. Kaplin was once quoted as saying, “Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.” And that rings so true for me. I look to the future, as far as I can possibly see, and off in the distance, although I can barely make it out, I think a see an upgraded version of who I am now. But when I turn my head one hundred eighty degrees in the other direction I find myself face to face with the demons that I’ve spent so long trying to fight. They scream words like “worthless” and “failure” and “fuck up” and although I plug my ears with my fingers as best I can, it sometimes brings me down. Life sometimes brings me down.

At the end of the day, when I lay in bed and count the shadows on the ceiling, my thoughts always turn to Haley. I wonder if she’ll ever be convinced that I’m not the monster that her mother made me out to be and I wonder if I’ll ever capture my dream of a father/daughter dance. Because that’s all I really want to do. Dance. Dance with her as we dance through life. Dance atop the rainclouds that cover the city of Chicago. Dance until the moon sets inside the depths of her brown eyes.

Dance.

Where the Sidewalk Ends...

From a sidewalk bench I peered out into the Annapolis inner harbor and watched as boats came and went. Fishermen and business men and the occasional trophy wife tied knots and threw ropes to shore and ducked under swinging sailboat booms that promised instant concussions to whomever they made contact with. The June skies were lazily clouded over and although the scene in front of me was essentially serene, my stomach was knotted and I couldn’t shake the feeling that all was amiss.

So much had changed for me in the four and a half years that had passed since I put down the bottle. My life had gone in so many different directions that my internal compass spun round and round without regard to the cosmic pulling of due north. I fought battles both inside and outside the ring and sometimes, when all seemed lost in the frenetic chaos of life, I didn’t know if I would make it.

The world’s chokehold seemed to be getting tighter and tighter and it was getting so much harder to breathe. The duality of the man was ever apparent as I fought to be a father and ended up with a daughter who professed her hatred for me. The duality of man was ever apparent when, through tears and the sniffling of the world’s cutest nose, that she told me that she wished I would stop fighting for her. And it just doesn’t seem fair to me. It just doesn’t seem fair to me how doing the right thing can sometimes feels so absolutely fucked up. It doesn’t seem fair that for Haley to someday love me she has to hate me now. It doesn’t seem fair to me that my package has a “damaged goods” stamp on it and the character defects that plague my being seem to preclude me from finding love.

But I’m 31 and I’ve lived an amazing life and I know, without a doubt, that life is unfair and that nothing that is worthwhile is easy. So I push on and push forward and continue to put one step in front of the other with a confident swagger. I don’t know where I’ll end up or even where the sidewalk will end but I’m confident that someday it will. And when it does, I’m going to put my feet up, and know that I rode this thing called life until the wheels fell off.

The Enormity of Life...

The city wakes with the sounds of taxi cab horns and the rattling diesel engines of passing CTA busses. The sun pulls back the curtain of clouds that has kept Chicago in a pre-summer haze and the little bit of sunlight that touches the sidewalks is enough to make the city collectively thank God for the changing of seasons.

As I maneuver my way through the maze of commuters dashing through DON’T WALK signs and dodging suburban drivers, I can’t help but think about the previous twenty-eight months. I’ve missed Chicago with ardor and passion since the day I first left in beat up rented U-Haul truck. I’ve missed the way the city lights sparkled like manmade stars from a distance as one nears it from the Dan Ryan expressway and I’ve missed the glass and steel and concrete that makes Chicago an inimitable architectural wonderland. But most of all, what I’ve missed more than anything else during the years that I’ve been away, is the unique ability this city has to extract authenticity from character-- because for as notably beautiful as this city is, it is as equally unforgiving at times. And on days when life seems to be throwing straight rights directly at my chin, it takes me back to a time when sobriety was laughable. Yet here I am, almost five years later and the vodka-flavored tears that I cried all those years ago seem far, far away. Times have changed. Tim has changed. Chicago has changed. But the struggle for significance in a world that measures by status remains constant.

I still struggle with my own failures as a man, as a father. I still struggle with a litany of character defects that sometimes damage the very fabric of the lives around me. I still struggle with the fragility of my own humanity and sometimes curse myself for so distinctively wearing my heart on my sleeve. But as I grow, as I continue my sometimes epic passage through a life that it oftentimes far from ordinary, I become more patient. I’ve started to learn that wearing life like a loose garment can have positive residual effects in a countless number of ways.

I guess I’m not sure what’s next at this point. My heart is still broken from having to say goodbye to one of the few people that I’ve actually let myself love and even though I’m home, it’s still an adjustment. I combat my emotional fatigue by diverting my attention deep into the pages of raggedy paperback novels and Facebook status changes but at the end of the day, when nothing is left but the sounds of a city that’s finally settling down for the night, I feel the enormity of life.

Because, as it turns out, life is big…and I am small.

A Man Under the Moon...

I lay in bed watching the blades of the ceiling fan spin shadows around the room. The rain falls softly outside, dampening the ground just enough to see the sky in its reflection. The last day of May slowly comes to a close and my life, it seems, is forever changed.

I’ve finally made it home.

Running back into the arms of the city that I’ve pined for since the day that I left, it feels so good to be back where I belong. But like many of the good things in life, the decision to be here is wrought with sacrifice. It’s bittersweet. It’s far from the triumphant homecoming I envisioned before I left and when I lay my head down on my pillow at night, I can still feel the dampness from the tears I’ve cried.

When I moved to Baltimore, or I guess it would be more correct to say when I was about

to leave Baltimore, I met a girl. I met a girl and the first time I saw her smile I knew I would love her. I met a girl and the first time I kissed her I knew I did love her. I met a girl and in the blink of an eye I knew that I wanted to be with her forever.

But, as it all too often is, forever was too short.

Because what was good for me, what was right for me, was, ironically, wrong for us. So, after almost a year, through a raging waterfall of crocodile tears, we said goodbye to each other. I put away pictures and packed up the things that reminded me of her and in just under a week—I was gone. My heart ached on the trip home although I tried to lose myself in the moments along the way, but honestly, it still aches now.

Even at thirty-one, after what sometimes seems to be a lifetime of experiences, I can’t figure out why life is the way it is sometimes. The task of putting one foot in front of the other can seem intensely arduous when ones heart is broken into a million little pieces. I think of her often and when night begins to fall upon my city, where the buildings hold hands with the sky, I wish that life had more do-overs.

I’ve only loved two women in my lifetime and while one of them continues her journey for significance just outside the borders of Charm City, the other gets married next week. I find myself touching knees to elbows as the reality of those to colossal relationship failures erode the faith that I once had in finding true love. Or maybe it’s not finding it that’s so hard, maybe it’s hanging on to is where the true battle lies. There was a poet in the sixties named Henry Rollin’s who was once quoted as saying, “They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There's got to be someone for me. It's not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone.”

I can feel the pain with which he writes and like Rollins, I am a man under the moon walking the streets until dawn. I walk and think and ignore the enormous feelings of failure that sometimes hit me when I think of the good things I’ve lost. But I continue to walk, even on days that I don’t want to, even on nights when the moon is hidden by clouds.

The Thoughts of a Weathered Soul...

The sun has risen and set on my thirtieth birthday and I stand at the beginning of a new decade. My thoughts race, as they often do, and the uncertainties of what lie ahead have me wishing for simpler times. My hiatus from the solace I find in the simplicity of a Word document has left me with emotional baggage that is threatening to exceed my cranial weight limit so I finally give in with hopes of purging the depths of my weathered soul.

I’ve gone from Chicago to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Baltimore, and from Baltimore to the beginning of a quarter life crisis. The unfamiliarity of my urban surroundings have me missing the consoling shoulders of friends that have married, gotten dogs, and begun to live out their lives by using sentences starting with “we” instead of “I.” I’ve come to a crossroads of sorts, feeling like subject matter for a John Lee Hooker song. I feel lost in space, wondering if the clarity I was searching for in my twenties will continue to elude me through my thirties. I wonder, often so, if I will ever discover the secret of NIMH in the rat race of life.

When January came to an end I celebrated my third year of sobriety. And although I was tremendously grateful for the gifts that it has given me, I celebrated it with a deep sense of discontentment because I feel like I have stopped evolving. My character defects seem to have resurfaced with a relentless fury as the man that I am trying to be and the man that I am seem to have reached an Old Western-esque impasse. I struggle with my own insanity lately, with the idiosyncratic nuances that comprise my uniqueness. I fight the lawlessness of a creative imagination that doesn’t stay chained to the present. I fight the monumental feelings of inadequacy I have from years of being “less than” and the fallout comes in the form of a tireless and static melancholy.

In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway wrote, “The world breaks everyone ... those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” I read his words and I don’t know if I am very good or very gentle or very brave. But I do know that lately I feel trapped in the world’s headlock and it’s getting so very hard to breathe. My vision slowly fades as the world tightens its hold and my mind flashes back to a different time, a time where I was young and fearless and where the silver lining of life was still polished. I miss staring at my shadow on sunny summer days and pretending I was twenty-two feet tall. I miss spinning the globe and stopping it with my finger and vowing I would someday go to where it landed. I miss the scared feeling I got when I thought about holding the hand of the girl I had a crush on.

But those times have changed.

Because life is constantly changing. The changing is constant. And the change that comes with the death of an entire decade has me yearning for the comforts that stability brings. So I fill my dishwasher and hang my pictures and curl up in my bed and do my best to infuse familiarity in foreign. But it’s hard. Because in addition to not knowing how to navigate the City of Baltimore, I’m not quite sure how to navigate my thirties. But I will put my best foot forward and continue to walk because the world has not broken me yet.

The world has not broken me yet.

When Niagra Falls...

“Sir, as a representative of the Canadian government, I am refusing your entry into Canada.”

I stood there with a blank look, similar to the one of a baby seal about to get clubbed. And even though the words were coming out of his mouth with a brooding sense of finality, they refused to register behind the bone of my thick skull. I pleaded.

“But sir, I am not the person described in the four pages you hold in your hand. I grew up and while doing so I made mistakes, some of which cost me my freedom and some of which still haunt me to this day. But regardless of how you view me as a person, which you’ve obviously based solely on the papers you hold in your hand, the fact remains that I served every minute of time for each one of those crimes. I paid my debt to society. I suffered the ramifications of those actions.”

His eyes glanced from me down to the documents and back to me as he calmly spoke.

“Sir, look at these charges. Assault. Resisting arrest. Felony eluding. Burglary. Domestic violence. Criminal trespass. The list goes on and on. There are nineteen charges listed here. I cannot, nor will not, allow you to enter Canada.”

I sighed audibly, exhaustedly, and looked around the room. What was I doing here, in this No Mans Land, ostensibly stuck in the small amount of space between the United States and Canada reserved for, apparently, extensive background checks.

The room was brightly lit with windows on all sides allowing the perfect view of both where you wanted to go, and where you came from. The icy water roared violently over the cliffs of the Niagara Gorge before settling down in the Maid of the Mist Pool 170 feet below. The city of Toronto looked peaceful in comparison, gazing down from its perch above the falls, alive with neon blood and casino money.

I scanned the room and settled my gaze upon the five guys huddled in the corner of the room.

“Sir, with all due respect, I ask you to please reconsider. I flew here this morning from Atlanta to meet those guys at the airport in Buffalo. My best friend is getting married and we came here, all the groomsman, to spend a rare weekend together as friends, to gamble, to go out, to celebrate one of the last nights we’ll have together. Look at the dates on those charges. ’97, ’98, ’99, and 2000. I haven’t been in trouble in almost eight years. How can it be that the decisions I made as a confused adolescent be in any way indicative of who I am now?”

The papers ruffled in the mans hands as he looked directly into my eyes.

“Sir, you can return to Buffalo and talk with the consulate about obtaining a pardon. If you return here with a pardon, you will be allowed to pass through. However, should you try to return through the border at any time without that pardon you will be deported, and as a result, you will never again be allowed to step foot on Canadian soil.”

My cause was lost and the sooner I realized that, the better. For me, there would be no bachelor party, no afternoon limo, no hotel overlooking the mighty Niagara Falls. There would be no secrets to keep, no pacts made to cover up the results of my friends blatant inebriation, and no way to get past a past that still finds a way to punish me eight years later.

I fucking hate authority. I hate cops and rent-a-cops and Mounties and security guards’. I hate jails and Customs and police stations and background checks and prosecuting attorneys. I hate the piece-of- shit public defender that convinced me to take the plea bargain that stuck me with this obtrusive felony. I hate fact that I have nineteen charges on my fucking rap sheet but more than anything, I hate fact that I am powerless to change even one of them.

The gray skies outside the building turned even grayer and the Canadian customs agent told me to meet him outside where he would give me my passport and show me how to return back to the States.

I felt like I was sixteen again, and out of all my friends, I was the one with the fake ID that didn’t work. I felt like the guy who goes out in downtown Chicago on Saturday night with sneakers on and can’t get into the club his friends are going to. I felt like I was somehow letting everyone down, like life was laughing at me and reminding me that regardless how many Windsor knots I tie, no matter how many limos I ride in, at the end of the day, I’m still me. I’m still a criminal and an alcoholic, a coke addict and a liar.

I slowly walked away from the counter and over to where Tommy and the rest of the crew were standing with apprehensive faces. The look I wore on mine said it all and with a few short sentences, I explained what had happened, that I wasn’t going with them and that I was sorry. I gave them each hugs; hip-hop half hugs full of attitude and understanding because each one of them knew it could have just as easily been them.

I walked away and through the double doors of the building, into the parking area where my rental car was parked. The wind whipped angrily under the canopy that covered the search area. Bits of icy snow fell sideways. Canada seemed like Oz, a place that I would never be able to get to no matter how hard I tried. I was angry. Unbelievably angry. I wanted to take my rage out on Mounties and anyone else who wore a fucking uniform. I wanted to show them what a criminal really was. I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, to hit the gas on the SUV go out like a gangster.

I started the car and drove over to where the customs official was waiting. He pointed in the direction of Buffalo while handing me my passport, telling me that I had to stop and check in with U.S. officials before I could get back into the states. I took it, rolled up the window, and drove away without saying anything. Fuck him and his high horse and his French fucking last name. My life is mine and I own every bit of it. I am a criminal and I’m proud of it. I took the road less traveled and paved that motherfucker. I did my time, I paid my debts, I explained to my nine year old daughter why her daddy left. I stood trial both literally and metaphorically for all that I’d done but at that moment I felt no vindication, I felt like a loser.

I drove the short distance to the guard shack and handed the officer my passport and paperwork. He asked me why I got refused, I told him because of my criminal record and he told me to pull around the corner and park.

I slowly pulled forward and bits and pieces of my past came flooding back. I thought about the guys that I had hung out with and how a couple of them were now dead or in prison. I thought about the police chase that landed me a felony, about the .380 semi automatic that I carried with me, and the kid that I jacked for eighteen dollars. I thought about the youth that I had wasted fighting an enemy that lived within.

I thought about my parents...

(To be continued...)