Why I Was Sterilized

A few months back I celebrated the first anniversary of having undergone a vasectomy.  As with most other major life decisions—especially those concerning one’s reproductive capability—it was not one arrived at by myself lightly nor without generous aforethought and introspective contemplation.  To proactively, and permanently, remove my ability to procreate was a decision many years in the making.  To date, only a select few close friends and associates have known about my decision, and I have now opted to elucidate, for a broader audience, some of the reasons why—if for no other motive than in the hopes that I might counsel others who wish not to bear children in their lives that the decision to become sterilized is neither “selfish” nor deserving of the harsh, indignant light of a society that bears down unfairly upon the single and the childless, of which I am (unapologetically) both.

I fully realize that many of you will not agree with me or my decision.  Some of you may not understand; others may even condemn.  But I ask only that you keep in mind one basic premise: My reproductive life is my own destiny to make as a please, up to and including not reproducing. 

How I arrived at the decision:

I’ve known pretty much since age 26 or 27 that I did not ever want to have children.  At that time I was in a long-term relationship with a woman a decade my senior.  Of all the many, many problems she and I had, the specific issue of procreation was, thankfully, not one of them.  She too had never been married and had no children, nor desired to bear any.  When weighing the pros and cons of the two of us “going the distance,” having kids never once entered into the equations, which was a blessing given the rapidly shrinking window of her reproductive years. 

The terminus of that relationship—my first, and to date, my only long-term—is now more than half a decade in the past.  There has not been any feeling of reversal in the intervening years as to my own wish to remain childless.  In all of my dating life since then, I have become even more comfortable being upfront with such information with new partners.  There are 6 billion people in the world; there’s always someone else who will be a better fit for me (and for you). 

As my thirties have ground on, I toyed more and more with the notion of cutting off the little swimmers permanently.  Since I did not wish to have kids, and since that would be a necessary dealbreaker for many potential future relationships, why not just cut off the tadpoles at the source and live my life as I wished on the course I chose?  That way, moving forward in my sexual life, I could engage safely in healthy, adult, consensual activity with theoretical future long-term partners without the fear of inadvertent conception.  (However, I cannot stress enough the importance of continuing to engage in safe sex even once you’re sterile as STDs await the careless and the foolish!)

The older I’ve gotten, the less and less I like children in general.  While many of my friends and relatives have wonderful little ones whom I love to make funny voices for, ply with sugar and caffeine and them tell them to leave their toys where their parents are sure to step on them, I also like handing them back when posterior aromas arise, when they start crying or when I’d simply rather return to engaging in adult interaction.  I actually get a kick out of being Cool Uncle Eric, the adult who will act like a doofus for them and let them do (almost) anything and let them run hog-wild and have fun before returning them to their rightful owners for deprogramming.  Frankly, after a few hours of being the goofy chaperone, I’m pretty beat.

Which transitions nicely into my next point.  Parenting is a 24/7/365 job, without break or respite.  Once you have children, it’s rather difficult to turn them back in like library books—or to even catch a break for a few hours.  Your life is no longer your own.  Which, obviously, is the way it ought to be: Children should be the primary focus for parents.  It’s a major, major responsibility, and my hat is off to anyone who can do it or who has done it.

Or who even wishes to.    

Furthermore, I’m not getting any younger.  I’m 35 now, and some days even eight hours of sleep still isn’t enough.  I don’t advise bearing children in your twenties (certainly not in your teens!), but on the other hand, I totally understand how those who bear children later in life tend to have more lackadaisical parenting styles.  (This is especially true of folks with multiple kids and for whom the youngest, the baby, is typically afforded a do-what-you-want modus.)  I can’t imagine tending an infant as I approach 40, let alone a toddler in my mid-forties, who will then be a teen when I’m in my fifties.  At that point I think I’ll be far too busy pondering why my friends have started dying (oh, wait, they already have!!!) and how I’m going to survive the ever-growing gap between rich and poor to give full attention to the next generation.

Furthermore, I dislike interacting with children for the same reason that I don’t enjoy interfacing with adults lacking in conversational abilities.  There’s a wonderful quote from Oscar Wilds that a bore is “someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.”  Kids can’t hold down a real conversation precisely because they’re kids and they haven’t yet achieved a level of maturity for a give-and-take, balanced conversation.  Just as with any other life skill, conversing at a mature level requires both age and experience.  Sadly, I’ve run into far too many adults who suffer from this very same deficit.  You know the type: that guy who can’t stop talking about his Saran-Wrap collection and his idiot coworkers and who never pauses long enough to catch a breath, let alone to ask you about even a simple question about your life and invariably returns the focus to himself.  At least children have the excuse that they don’t yet have the skills to engage in proper discourse, but I fear that far too many of them will just grow up to be adults who never STFU either.  To quote George Carlin, “God, people are fucking boring!”

I have to interact with too many adults who are terrible conversants just in the course of getting through my day.  One reason I remain single is I suffer fools insufferably—combined with my ADD, a non-engaging conversant will bore me faster than a toaster infomercial marathon at three in the morning.  Therefore, I choose to subject myself to the vagaries of child-prattle as seldom as possible.  My time and my sanity are important to me, even if they aren’t to your children. 

So that’s more or less the how I came to decide to get snipped: I don’t want kids of my own because I don’t wish for the responsibility, the investment, the encroachment upon my lifestyle nor for their incessant, infantile drivel.  And I already feel I’m too old. 

Now I shall turn to the why I got it done.

The onus for contraception falls unfairly on women

Women have to carry a developing humanoid to term for nearly a year and then suffer the birthing process; men only need fire off their baby gravy and walk away.  That’s a pretty shitty deal in the mammalian sweepstakes, and I don’t pretend for a second that it’s in any way equitable in terms of the biological investment between the genders. 

It’s little wonder then that medicine has sought ways to “solve” the conundrum of contraception through such female-centric options as the Pill, the Patch, hormone injections, etc.  To use a hockey analogy, with nine players all fighting to fire into a single goal, it make more sense to protect the goal itself rather than to try to individually block—or kill—all of the players.  (Although, depending on the metaphorical men in question, eradication might be far more preferable.)  Barrier methods such as condoms also follow this strategy of stopping sperm from meeting ovum. 

But let’s get real: What men have to do to avoid conception versus what women do is terrifically unbalanced.  I think if guys had to take a pill every day that fucked up their dicks and made them moody and gave them weight fluctuations, they’d be far more sympathetic in this regard.  Some women don’t or can’t utilize birth control for various individual biological reasons, and yet the question is always asked: “Are you on the pill?”  No one ever asks a male: “Hey, are you sterilized?” 

To date, no male birth control pill has been successfully brought to market by Big Pharma.  But were such an option available when I started becoming sexually active, I would have absolutely taken it.  (One scare was enough, thank you very much, Crazy Lady From Orange County.) 

The burden for birth control has been, to date, unfairly placed on women due to a combination of sex-specific reproductive specialization, economics, varying—and largely sexist and/or misogynistic—societal mores and medicine.  So, in my own small, insipid way, getting sterilized was my gesture of evening out the playing field, however slightly. 

It’s my little way of saying, “I’m with you, girls.” 

It’s cheap

Best $30 I ever spent.  Yes, thirty dollars!  My insurance company required only that I fork over two copays to consult with a urologist and then for him to perform the procedure.  The remaining two grand was paid for thanks to the “good people” of Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Thirty dollars for a lifetime of not having to worry about impregnation.  (To be fair, it’s not like I’m saving money on prophylactics.)

Since I wish to avoid inducing nausea, I will skip over the particulars of the actual surgery itself, for which I was fully awake and had only a local anesthetic.  (I have a rather high tolerance for pain, but until given an extra shot or two directly into my business, I thought I might actually vomit the pain was so intense.  As I have a slight background in medicine and am far from squeamish, I intended to watch the procedure, but the pain associated with the surgery prior to the extra dose of anesthetic usurped this plan.  Thank God for my view being blocked.)    

It’s reversible

If the zombie apocalypse arrives and I’m one of the last men on earth, recanalization is medically possible…for a price, of course (but frankly, I’d still rather let the human race perish).  When I first inquired of my insurance company as to if the vasectomy would be covered under my policy—which it was—they made sure to repeat and then repeat and then repeat again that a future reversal would be entirely out of my own pocket to the tune of $50,000 or more.  (I had to sign several documents indicating I understood what I was getting into.) 

That’s like buying a tricycle but then deciding you’d rather have a Porsche. 

Sorry, but no woman, nor any theoretical future child of mine, is worth that kind of investment.

Poor people have absolutely no business having children

For the lion’s share of my post-college life, I have either been completely broke, just about broke or slightly above broke but for a year or two.  At the time of this writing, I live paycheck to paycheck and am once again seeking a second job at a restaurant just to make ends meet.  (I don’t even have furniture in my place yet.)  That basically covers my bills every month but not groceries nor paying off my debts.  To bring a little human into that equation would be the apogee of folly for I would be fiscally unable to provide for it. 

I’m fairly egalitarian in most of my views, but on procreating, I firmly believe that you shouldn’t have kids until you’re financially able to support them.  Sociologists have studied why the poor seem to have more children than they can care for, which include income and class disparity, lack of education, prevailing social attitudes as to a woman’s “proper place” and a whole host of other social and economic factors.  I’m fortunate that I grew up in a fairly comfortable middle-class situation and was blessed with a first-rate secondary and high school education that included comprehensive sex education.  However, this did not change the fact that, as an English major who entered the workforce as the dot.com bubble burst in 2000, I was all but assured a difficult professional vocational road.  Furthermore, I’ve been through not less than five layoffs in my career, so even my East Coast German work ethic hasn’t helped stem the vagaries of the economy, over which I have no control. 

Sometimes working hard just isn’t enough. 

And so I’ve eked out a fairly lower-middle-class living in the 14 years since graduating college.  At times I couldn’t even feed myself, let alone a partner, and certainly not a child or children (plural). 

Government help exists for a reason, but wouldn’t getting sterilized be a lot cheaper?

I’m just sayin’. 

Kids have everything, including fucking Vegas!

American culture is so high on children that even Las Vegas, that last bastion of sin and vice, has made a stab at being “family-friendly” for the better part of 15 years.  I was in Vegas recently for a conference, and if there’s one place in the world where I do NOT want to be tripping over little monsters, it’s Sin City.  The Disney empire was built specifically for and by you, with finely overpriced destinations in California and Florida for your saccharine, sanitized fun and view of life.  Please take your little shits there, and leave me Gomorrah. 

People with kids never shut up about their fucking kids

The vast, vast majority of my friends and colleagues who have children are amazing parents.  Every time I visit them and see how hard they have to work not just to pay bills like I do but also to tend and care for their progeny, I continue to be impressed.  It requires a level of fortitude and thanklessness that I find to be frankly miraculous.

But it’s just not me.

One of my absolute biggest resentments about the child-worship society is when someone I have never met before, within 30 seconds of being introduced, whips out their phone to show me pictures of their little Mini-Me’s. 

Now I must explain, there are instances of social necessity when politeness must trump my personal ire.  For instance, if my boss were to show me pictures of his or her family, I must, of course, smile and nod if in fact I wish to keep my job.  But that is about the only time when it is acceptable for someone outside of my circle of friends, family and associates where I will blow smoke up someone’s ass regarding photos of their children.  When I see photographs and images of my friends’ children, my reaction and smiles are genuine—the sheer joy that I see on the faces of my friends makes me joyful precisely because I know they are happy, and I know that they are providing loving homes for their little ones, to the mutual joy of all.  They’re the “good ones.”  And again, because they are my friends, I want to show interest in their lives, which includes their jobs, their ambitions, and yes, their spouses and children. 

The thing is, I have nothing to add quid pro quo in such conversations; I can’t whip out my phone and show my friends pics of my spouse or children.  (I don’t even have pets!)  This goes back to the phenomenon of adult conversation: Just because something is interesting to you does not mean it will interest me—and vice versa.  So sure, let’s talk about your kids for a few minutes, but then let’s move the conversation on to something of more mutual interest.  This is how a real conversation is, or how it should be.  You ask me questions, I ask you questions.  We discuss things we have in common as well as the uniqueness of our respective lives, even though such may be less than fascinating to the other.  Because that’s what friends do.  That’s what being adult and being polite is about.  It’s how mature people engage in verbal intercourse.  I’ll listen to almost anything a good friend has to tell me because he or she is my friend.  I expect the same in return.

But if you are not my friend, if you are not my boss, or if you are not my family, I could not care less about your kids, especially if we have literally just met for the first time.  So a few years back I instituted a new policy: If, within the first few minutes of meeting me, you show me pictures of your children, then I in turn will take out my phone and show you a dirty photo.  If you’re shocked at this, my reasoning goes as follows:

You didn’t ask to see a pornographic photo, just like I didn’t ask to see pictures of your little poop machines.  And speaking candidly, I find your assumption that I would even want to to be as offensive as you find the smutty selfies that various women have sexted me over the years. 

So there.

“I’m tired of selfish men”

When I first moved to Illinois in December of last year I was talking with a gal through a dating site.  We had great chemistry and were set up for a first meeting when she asked me about kids.  When I informed her that I would not be procreating, she said (reasonably) that we should probably not go any farther as that was an absolute dealbreaker for her. 

Fair enough.  I’m not going to lead anyone on nor misrepresent my intentions and desires.  I don’t believe in lying to women just to get laid—honesty is the correct path, always.  So I texted back to say I completely understood and wished her well. 

This was her exact response:

“I’m just so tired of selfish men.”

OK, now you’ve picked a fight, honey!  Firstly, the lady in question was an attorney, who thus should know better than to apply ad hominem attacks in her argument.  Heretofore, she had apparently found me nothing but charming and pleasant.  Now I’m suddenly selfish?

To her credit, she later apologized for the remark, which was rather big of her.  But then she said something even stranger:

“I just think it’d be so great to see kids all excited on Christmas morning.”

That’s quite a massive investment of time, money and energy into raising another human being for the incredible minor flash memory of Junior beaming when he unwraps his Tonka Truck the morning of December Twenty-Five.  Her remark also perfectly illustrates yet another reason why I find it difficult to relate to would-be parents: They seem to focus solely on hyper-specific theoretical positive future moments rather than the massively inordinate difficulties that befall even the most well-meaning, well-prepared, well-heeled and even-keeled parents.  (To wit, I have a friend who beams himself into a future of watching Predator with his son someday, but I always ponder how disappointing it might be if Movie Geek Jr. said, “Daddy, this movie really sucks!”  His entire reason for parenting would suddenly be entirely nil.)  No one ever seems to take into account the fact that for every jovial Christmas morning, there will be the death of a grandparent, the loss of a favorite toy, Fluffy getting run over by the UPS van, chicken pox, measles, puberty, truancy, failing tests, experimentation with drugs and sex, fights, bullying, college funds and the normal bad choices that young people make throughout adolescence and beyond.

And that’s if everything is NORMAL!

No one wants to believe that they might actually be disappointed in their children either. Every hypothetical progeny is always the golden child, the honor roll student, captain of the chess and football teams, the valedictorian at Harvard, Hercules unto earth. 

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the only thing that doesn’t lie is numbers.  Most children born today will be nothing but average wage-earners…just like me.  While I’d love to wax about what phenomenal accomplishments I’ve made, the truth is, mostly through my own choices and despite constant striving, I’ve led a decidedly lower-middle-class life punctuated by periods of poverty.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love love LOVE my life and would rather have it than anyone else’s, but I’m fairly certain that when I was a wee lad, my parents had visions of me being a successful something rather than a wage-earning what-I-am.  Sure, they tell me constantly that they’re proud of me, but I’m part of the first generation in a century where the children actually did worse than their parents.  My generation has far more qualified, college-educated people than ever before competing for fewer and fewer jobs.  More and more people are being added to the planet every year, which will only increase the competition for economic and biological resources. 

To put it another way, the future, as now, will feature a kakistocric oligarchy of the superrich robber-barons and everyone else.  The media has people believing that we’ll will be rich someday, but it’s just not true and flies in the face of all economic theory and principles.  Most of us, college-educated or not, will be clock-punchers.  I’ve done every menial job you can think of and then some.  I never thought I’d work at a restaurant at age 35 after doing so at ages 26 and 16, but that’s life, and I’m not ashamed of it. 

My point is only that the “narrative” that people create about their progeny, whether theoretical or actual, will be far disparate from the realities of the life that actually awaits. 

No one ever said, “I really hope my kid is an average wage-earner someday.”  Welcome to the real world; enjoy your stay.

So if anything, in response to the Lawyer’s admonition as to my being selfish, I would retort that my desire to remain childless is anything but selfish.  One less person in the world means (slightly) more resources for everyone else.  If you multiplied that by millions of others, then the 21^st century population bomb might not be so incredibly scary to behold. 

Finally, I don’t need a little Mini-Me to validate my own existence.  I’m fine with it as it is and don’t need the ego stroke of my genes continuing on beyond my own existence. 

This “selfish man” sleeps soundly at night without crying emanating from the next room, thank you very much. 

But someday I’ll get a cat. 

I’d be an absolutely terrible father

You know that bumbling dad on most sitcoms who really doesn’t give a shit about his kids but is kind of stuck in a marriage he can’t fathom with a woman he can’t stand just because he knocked her up during a one-night stand?  The guy who would rather watch bowling on TV than hear about the day you had at school (think Al Bundy)?  That would be me.  I work all day, and most of the folks I encounter in the world make me want to vomit up shit on a near-constant basis, so having to come home and hear high-pitched, squeaky voices clamoring “Daddy, daddy!” doesn’t put a smile on my face; it makes me wish, in this particular phantasm, to be back at the office staring at the laser beams emanating from the copy machine. 

Furthermore, I’m impatient, frequently forgetful, often inattentive and insensitive to the needs of others, and enjoy noise and silence in precise alterations too much to have my little bulwark against the world invaded by ankle-biters.  Furthermore, I like to drink prodigiously, be out until the small hours, swear a great deal and watch violent movies that have lots of nudity.  I’m not giving that up for anyone.  And I’m certainly not spending my wakeaday hours watching the same five animated movies with Junior.

If you don’t want to see tits, my advice is to stay away from my home.  There will be no “family-friendly” section in my Blu-Ray library unless it specifically involves more advanced fare like Mary Poppins. 

Genetics

I make no bones about the fact that I suffer from anxiety and depression, for which I am medicated and have achieved a more even-keeled existence over the past few years.  Not only that, but to no one’s surprise at all, I was diagnosed as ADD when I was nine, for which I was also medicated.  All such conditions have a high concordance for being passed on between the generations.  Furthermore, cancer, high blood pressure, strokes, arthritis and senility run high on both sides of my family.  As do alcohol abuse and Germanic screaming matches. 

My cutting sense of humor would hardly balance out the darker side of that potential genetic stew.

No kid is going to out-me me

“I see so much of myself in Junior,” goes the common refrain.  Some people think it’s cute, but it’s not so to me. 

I don’t want to see a little bit of myself in a little human being.  I’m all me, and frankly that’s all the world will ever need.  Period. 

“My kids are my world…”

Ugh, if I have to hear or read this tired bromide just one more time on a dating website, I’m going to burn down the nearest McDonald’s Playplace a la The Wicker Man.  OF COURSE your kids are your fucking world, dipshit!  It’s like saying aloud that you need oxygen, water and food to survive.  It’s a given and need not be repeated. 

I think the reason that so many people say aloud how much they looooooooove their kids is that deep down, they’re actually trying to convince not me but rather themselves of the fact.  I believe this actually presents an existential crisis for some parents: All those lost hours of sleep, lost time, money spent and countless sacrifices made for the sake of the offspring must, surely must, be for something.  No one wants to believe that they’re bad parents or that they didn’t do a good job of raising a child.  Or that having the child cut off so many other potential paths.  And so they talk themselves into a self-reinforcing schema that because their kids are their “world,” that it was all worth it. 

Even if it wasn’t. 

Maybe it really was all a major mistake.  Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror, hating being a parent, but being stuck with the duty.  While I no in any way advocate for such a course of action, I can actually understand when mothers or fathers simply vanish into the ether one day without a trace.  It’s a way of fallaciously trying to reclaim the carefree days of yore, which are gone forever.  (My siblings and I have discussed how our father seems to be engaging in revisionist history about our childhoods, when he seemed so frequently to be cranky and annoyed with us but now talks glowingly of what “enchanting” kids we were.) 

I actually think I’d have a lot more respect for a lot of parents if they just came out and said something to the effect of, “You know, my kids are a royal pain in the ass and they cost me a fortune and they annoy me almost all of the time, but I’m kind of stuck with em and so I do the best I can and we manage to actually have some pretty good times together.”  If I saw that on a woman’s dating profile, that type of honesty might catch my attention—certainly my respect.

A little while back I was visiting with a friend from high school, who took me on a tour of his adopted Southern hometown.  In one of the more awesome soliloquies on the subject of parenting I have yet witnessed, my friend let loose with the following:

“Kids ruin everything.  They ruin your house, they ruin your marriage, they ruin your body, they ruin your sleep, they ruin your bank account.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but if I had it to do all over again, I’d just be one of those assholes.”

To this I had but one response: silent respect. 

OK, two responses, the second of which was turning to my friend, a wicked smile upon my lips, and the retort, “I am one of those assholes.”

I love being that species of childless asshole who does what he wants when he wants and with whom he chooses and without regard for little humans under my care.  I am not at all interested in trading off. 

What if you meet the love of your life and she wants kids but you don’t?

I find this question to be extremely presumptuous.  Firstly, it assumes right away that I am immediately in the wrong for not wanting kids, a prejudice which I am working hard to fight at every available opportunity.  Secondly, I would turn this query upon its head: What if she meets me but I don’t want to have kids?  Why is it automatically assumed that the male in question must make the sacrifice in this particular equation? 

I believe firmly that people should stick to their convictions, including—and especially—where procreation is concerned.  Compromising my decision for the sake of an “ideal” mate would—while ostensibly romantic—ultimately doom not only my partnership/marriage but also the psychological well-being of my theoretical children.  The day would come when this alternate-universe EFA looked down upon his children, whom he never wanted to have in the first place but for the sake of “winning” their mother, and realize that the trade-off was not worth it.  The marriage would suffer and ultimately end, resulting in yet another broken home.

Compromise is a good thing, and it’s what all relationships are ultimately built upon, but when it comes to the issues of procreation, there can be no such thing when one partner wishes strongly to have children and the other does not.  It is best for both persons—and for the sake of any theoretical offspring—to part company and/or just be friends. 

The good news is that there are many, many potential mates for both those who wish to have children and those who do not.  I thought I was the “only one,” but in the course of my interactions with friends, colleagues and others, I find there are more and more of “us” who wish to purposely remain childless.  There’s someone for me other than the ad hominem Lawyer out there. 

As there is for you.  You don’t ever have to “settle” on this issue.  Ever.

Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?

By even the most conservative estimates, raising a child from birth to age 18 costs roughly in the neighborhood of $250,000.  That’s right, a quarter of a million smackers just to get them to voting age.  This doesn’t take into account college and the inevitable “helping out” that even the most independently minded among us need from time to time in college and entering young adulthood (or beyond).  Worst job market in a generation, and many of my gen have had to move home at one point or another (myself included).  A parent’s duty doesn’t end the day you turn 18; it’s a lifelong ride not just of finances, but of guidance in one form or another.

But back to the monetary issue.  By not having the responsibility/necessitating of spending a quarter mil on one—or several times that for each ensuing unit dropped—I will have built up a pretty decent nest egg for my retirement years.  No, I may not have my disappointment-of-a-son there to help me get into my adult diapers, but with the cash saved by not procreating, I can afford hospice care and the best damn drugs money can buy (legal or otherwise).

Also, frankly, I don’t plan to live long enough to become senile.  I’ll take any disease you can throw at me, but as soon as I start to lose my marbles, my personality, what makes me uniquely me, just take me out back of the barn and put a bullet in my skull just like they did to Candy’s dog in Of Mice and Men.  People who want to live to a “ripe old age” typically do so to ensure that their “legacy” is intact with grandchildren. 

You can burn it all ten minutes after I’m gone. 

Except for my writing, that is.    

There are too many of us already

By even the most conservative estimates, the population of Planet Earth will top 11 billion by 2050.  Eleven billion!!!!  Aside from the obvious facts of an ever-increasing populace competing for fewer and fewer resources, the effects of the biosphere and overcrowding, my choice to not have kids will, ultimately (and sadly) not make much of a difference in the grand scheme. 

But I know I’m not the only one.  I know there are more like me out there (I’ve met you!) who also wish to remain childless and do their part for the greater part of humanity and the planet’s health in general.  You’re not alone; I’m one of you!

And you know what, if I’m ever saddled with the notion of wishing to shepherd a young person to adulthood, I could always adopt.  Nurture is often as important—or more so—than nature.  Consider how many children grow up unplanned and unwanted.  They could use good homes too.  I’m not only pro-choice, I’m also pro-adoption rather than pro-creating.  You can still be a parent without being a biological gamete-spreader.  Consider giving an unwanted child a home instead. 

For ’tis better for one child to be born into absolute love than for a million children to be born into absolute apathy.  (You can quote me on that.)

Aren’t you worried about disappointing your parents?

In a word, no.  Next question.

What about continuing your “legacy”?

When I was in the Australian Outback in 2011, I learned that that Aborigines have a vastly different approach to death than do we here in the West (or the Far East, for that matter).  When a member of the tribe dies, the elders order a week of mourning, whereupon the tribespeople wail and moan, some even cutting open their flesh to allow the grief to “flow out” of their bodies.  When the tribe elders declare the period of mourning over, the deceased is never mentioned or spoken about again.  As a nomadic hunter-gatherer people, where all that matters is the next supply of food and shelter against the Outback’s unforgiving landscape, climate and dangerous fauna, such luxuries as lineage and legacy simply have no place in the continued health of the tribe.  (Even more existentially devastating, if a member of the tribe is injured too egregiously, even if young, he or she is tied to a tree and left behind so as not to hinder the clan’s survival.) 

In the visitor center for the famous Ayers Rock—which the Aborigines call Uluru—photos of the dead are covered over so as not to offend the Aboriginal sensibilities.  In fact, such is the Aboriginal preoccupation with leaving the past and the dead behind that movies and television shows broadcast throughout Australia are preceded by a warning message that the program “may feature deceased Aborigines,” so that any who are watching can change the channel in time lest they see a deceased tribesman. 

Such a view of death is about as striking a counterpoint as one could imagine from American and Eastern traditions especially, where people are taught to revere their ancestors and their heritage and to pass on the traditions and names of those who came before unto posterity.  Hearing how the Aboriginal Australians deal with the inevitability of death hit something of a nerve in my being.  All around me I see people obsessed with their “footprint” and what they leave behind for their inheritors.  As no one shall pick up for me when I’m gone, I almost want my leavetaking from this mortal coil to be along the lines of the Outback style.  I wish for no public funeral, no wailing over my corpse, no Bible verses, no stone marking where my bones resideth.  I want it to be just like when I go off on a walk or a drive without telling anyone where I’m going or when I’ll be back.  

My epitaph can be short and simple:

“EFA has gone for a walk”

Or, “Here layeth EFA, the porn guy”

While such is my wish for my physical body, since I’m a writer, which of necessity requires a tremendously portioned ego, it’s only my hope that when I’m gone, my “work” might help out future persons possibly not yet born.  The words, the ideas, are what’s far more important from our ancestors than their physical remains—or their lines.  Maybe I’ll leave something behind for the greater knowledge and edification of humanity…or maybe my oeuvre will be forgotten ten minutes after I’m gone. 

It’s out of my control.  And I won’t be around to know it anyway. 

I’d rather live my life while I’m alive than worry about a future I can never experience.  

Guns, Germs & Steel

I’m an unapologetic misanthrope, which means that while I am incredibly fond of a great many individual persons, I am incredibly cynical about people.  Since the dawn of our species, and especially since the advent of civilization, homo sapien has found more and more reasons to slaughter one another in ever-faster fashions.  Think about it: The technology to wipe out every single living thing on Earth in seconds is now almost a century old!  We’d been working up to the splitting of the atom for thousands of years as the ultimate weapon.  The fact that no nuclear devices have been used in war for seventy years is, frankly, astonishing. 

Oh, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t tried to end humankind time and again throughout our history.  Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs & Steel, explains, in excruciatingly candid and researched detail, why Eurasian peoples were able to conquer almost all of the known world over the past three millennia and how, on a long enough time scale, we’ll eventually wipe each other out completely.  No culture or microculture in the world is without its bloody history of exterminating enemies.  The only difference in the 21^st century is that genocide tends to be frowned upon, and it happens simulcast on the Internet instead of in books written years or even centuries after the fact.  Nowadays the bloodthirsty ways of our species are on CNN. 

There have been, on average, nearly two wars going every year since recordkeeping began.  Humanity has never been without war and never will be.  These figures don’t even take into account violence committed for personal gain and/or psychopathic reasons and not in the name of the state.  We’ve been killing each other for a long, long, long time.  We’re quite good at it.  And no conflict in history has ever halted wars.  A century ago this year began the Great War in Europe, foolishly misnomered as the “War to End All Wars.” 

It’s not going to get better.  With more of us, no matter how “civilized” we’ve become over the centuries, more wars are inevitable, especially as resources become scarcer and the populations grow larger.  To say nothing of the rape of the environment and the holocaust of the world’s biosphere and species at our hands. 

Why would I elect, purposely, to continue this farce?  To unleash upon the planet another carbon-producing, resource-taking, polluting unit?  To continue on our species’ sad, violent legacy? 

The answer is simple: I shan’t.  My part in the tragedy that is the human chapter on Planet Earth ends with me.  I wouldn’t dream of bringing children or grandchildren into a world where the oceans are dead, the rainforests are gone, murder in the name of religion remains a way of life and most people can’t even point to their home city on a map. 

Silence is assent; I choose dissention.  My theoretical descendants, if they ever existed, would thank me.  

Hymns for the Fallen

A few weeks ago I pitched the culture editor at my new employer, The Washington Times, about doing a story on the National Memorial Day Choral Festival, in which I had the rare opportunity to sing this past Sunday thanks to my friend and fellow USC Men's Chorus alum, Dan, who works for MCI out of Phoenix.  It was a very fine concert, and an even finer way for someone like myself--who never served in the armed forces--to honor all of those living and deceased who have.

The Times culture editor accepted the pitch and allotted me 500 words.  The situation was complicated by the fact that I was in the midst of moving from Illinois to DC at the time, so almost all of my interviewing had to be done from roadside Starbucks's and in my parents' home in New Jersey while picking up some final effects to bring to my new home in the District.  But I'm a writer and an intrepid reporter, and despite such hassles I made my deadline and turned in my 500-word opus ahead of zero hour.

Alas...Memorial Day came and went, and despite my "gently" prodding the culture editor at the office all this past week, the piece did not run.  (This I've confirmed via constant searching in the story queue, endless Googling and the lack of a "hey, please send me your invoice" email.)  Before it becomes even less timely, I am self-publishing (to be read: this story has by now lost any chance of a real publication) my writeup, along with photos of myself with the story subjects taken this past weekend at Kennedy.  It was an absolute honor to work with these gentlemen, all of them distinguished veterans of the armed forces and lifelong musicians and educators, on such a special event.

This is just a small sample of what I can do...of what I will do in my capacity with the Times.

Intrepid reporters never say die; rather they learn to no longer taste the bitterness of disappointment--typically masking it with alcohol.

****

Hymns for the Fallen

WWII veterans to lead Memorial Day concert at Kennedy Center

By Eric Althoff

Weston Noble has a unique claim to infamy.  In 1945 he entered Adolph Hitler’s underground bunker, sat behind the Fuhrer’s desk and…proceeded to put his feet up. 

“I wanted to ‘play the role a little bit,’” Noble, 91, laughs.  “[The bunker] wasn’t even locked.”   

Berlin had fallen to the Russians only a month prior; Noble’s tank battalion was the first American unit to enter the Third Reich’s heart. After his moment of Fuhrer playacting, Noble ran back to his jeep, grabbed a wrench and proceeded to break off a corner of Hitler’s marble desk as a memento to send home. 

Alas, the desk piece never made it stateside, nor, sadly, did millions of young men.  This Memorial Day weekend, those lost will be honored at a special tribute concert at the National Memorial Day Choral Festival at Kennedy Center.  Noble, a lifelong musician and 59-year educator at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, will serve as one of several esteemed guest conductors.

Dr. Craig Jessop, himself a retired Air Force officer and former director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, will serve as the concert’s artistic director for the fourth time. 

“I have a very close affinity and appreciation for our veterans, those still living and those who are no longer here,” Jessop said.  “I think it’s a very appropriate way to honor the men and women who have given their lives for this country.  For me this is a very personal and very satisfying way to serve and give back to those who have given so much.”

Jessop, the founding dean of the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University, will conduct the Air Force Symphony Orchestra and a “festival choir” composed of various individual choruses from around the country. 

In addition to Noble, Jessop will be joined at the conductor’s podium by Col. Larry H. Lang, commander and conductor of the Air Force Band, and Col. Arnald D. Gabriel, who conducted the U.S. Air Force Band, Symphony Orchestra and Singing Sergeants from 1964 to 1985.  Gabriel will lead the ensembles in “Hymn tothe Fallen” from Saving Private Ryan and the march from the D-Day film TheLongest Day.  The latter holds a special place for Gabriel, who landed on the beach at Normandy 70 years ago next month.  He will fly to France to commemorate the anniversary, which includes a concert in Paris and a ceremony at the cemetery on the beach, where Gabriel will conduct the same pieces from the Kennedy Center event.

Asked if it seems like seven decades since that fateful day, Gabriel chuckles good-naturedly and says, “God no!  I’m 89 this month and still going strong.” 

In addition to flying to France, the Alexandria resident’s busy early summer includes leading the Virginia Grand Military Band at Arlington’s Schlesinger Hall on May 24.  That ensemble comprises both active duty and retired personnel.

Of such a busy schedule, Gabriel responded, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

http://www.kennedy-center.org/events/?event=ROXAQ

Myself with Weston Noble, 91, May 24, 2014.

With Dr. Craig Jessop. May 24, 2014.

With Col. Arnald D. Gabriel, 89, backstage at Kennedy Center, May 25, 2014.

With Dan Schwartz, college chum from the USC Men's Chorus and MCI's tourmeister.

Hollywood Days and Night(mare)s: Mr. Orange’s Mountaintop

I have a little rule when it comes to interacting with celebrities in public, and it’s one I’ve tried to impart to others.  Call it EFA’s Law of Unmutual Attraction.  It basically goes like thus:

Ask yourself this question: If places were switched, would you want to be pestered?

More colloquially, it comes down to basic manners.  I’ve been out at a number of restaurants in Hollywood where celebs frequently dine.  Most of them are too haughty for my tastes, but one of them, Koi, in West Hollywood, I’ve been privileged to dine in free of charge (or nearly free of charge) a handful of times over the years thanks to my friends David Schoner and Heather Colache.  It’s a long story, but they made the acquaintance of the general manager, Mark, at a film commission expo in Santa Monica.  He had, at the time, an idea for a television show about Atlantic City during Prohibition.  If this concept sounds familiar, it’s because his “partner” in the creative process was none other than Mark Wahlberg, who then—or so I’ve been told—ran off with the concept to Scorsese and HBO, and the rest is history.  Mark the Manager was left in the lurch and, last I’d heard, he and Marky Mark were no longer speaking; he has since left Koi. 

Anyway, Koi is one of those spots where paparazzi basically stake out the sidewalks on La Cienega Blvd. awaiting the famosos inside to perform the oh-so-photo-worthy act of handing their tickets to the valet and thereafter driving off in their Porsches/Mercedezes/DeLoreans.  I once saw Cindy Crawford exiting Koi, the incessant flashbulbs washing out her skin as she and her date made their way to the getaway car.

Now imagine having that happen to you daily, or even several times a day.  Don’t get me wrong, movie stars and other celebrities are paid handsomely—and then some—for the relatively little amount of work they actually do, but on a humanistic kind of level, I actually do find myself sympathizing when they go on talk shows and bemoan constantly being hounded by photogs and gossip columnists (did I actually just use the term “gossip columnist” like it’s the 1930s????) and have bottom-feeders digging through their trash in the search for used dong bags and incriminating love letters from politicians on a constant basis.  There’s no privacy, no anonymity.  You can’t even go to Target to buy a Nerf ball for your million-dollar test-tube baby without being followed by a coterie of Perez Hilton’s minions. 

As much of my personality as I air in public, there’s still a large side of my life that I keep just for myself.  It seems nearly impossible to imagine dodging cameras and microphones everywhere you go, all asking the same banal questions and capturing the same lame Kodak moments in the hopes that you’ll spill your coffee and be captured for all time in an awkward “oh-fuck-that-burns” grimace.  I actually kind of understand guys like Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn when they finally just lose their shit and punch out a paparazzo.  (Remember what Michael Jackson once sang: “Leave me alone!!!!”)  It’s also a reason why I understand and respect the odd celebs who up and leave behind the hubs of L.A. and New York.  Sandra Bullock spends most of her year in Austin, where she is considered a part of the community rather than community property. 

So back to my initial premise, being at Koi: Even though I knew that Cindy Crawford, whose poster I had in my bedroom when I was 14, was dining mere tables away, it never even occurred to me to try and say hello.  Restaurant managers in L.A. live and die by their discretion and keeping the “undesirables” at bay; I’m a veteran (and current soldier) in the restaurant industry, and there’s a certain code of honor when it comes to making guests feel welcomed and comfortable.  This goes doubly for the famous and the infamous.  The one and only thing that matters in that situation is the color green, i.e., the better your treatment of the guest not because they’re a celebrity but because they are your guest means bigger tips and more return business.  This is true for any customer, but celeb-handling is a delicate game in the hospitality industries.  They know that you know who they are, so it need not be said.  Nor do they need to be fawned over.  They get fawned over all day long by flatterers and fans who kiss their asses; sometimes they just want a good meal with their “real friends” without being gawked at by the plebs.  L.A. and NYC restauranteurs who understand this enjoy repeat business and generous tips.  So it is with Koi. 

So I say an emphatic no to bothering someone when they’re dining.  If you want to show your appreciation to a celeb for all the joy and/or masturbatory fantasies they’ve brought you over the years, do what I’ve done: send em a drink (the story of sending Norm MacDonald a cocktail will be posted another day).  If you get waved over in thanks, then you can go say hi, Cindy.  The same goes for stalking someone’s home or office.  It’s rude and obnoxious and will ultimately result in your not getting to meet the person.  If you live in L.A. the odds are so in your favor of running into a celebrity casually that you don’t even need to stalk!  Just live your sunny California life, and I guarantee you that sooner or later, you’ll probably find yourself at the deli next to Ben Stein (that happened to me) or have Christian Slater come into the toy store you’re working at and he being kind enough to sign your girlfriend’s birthday card (which happened to my friend Tiberius). 

(My favorite all-time strangest celeb run-in was encountering Max Weinberg, of all places, on a shark cage tour on Oahu’s North Shore, but that too is for another time.)

I’ve been fortunate enough not only to bump into celebrities on the street or backstage at shows, but also to work with them, be in plays and productions with them, to say I was “on the same bill” as George Wendt, William Atherton, Malcolm McDowell, Michael York.  All incredibly friendly, polite gentleman, all of whom had great stories in answer to my questions about working with Stanley Kubrick, being on the giant set of Day of the Locust, etc.  People love it when you ask them about their work.  Don’t you like it when someone at a party inquires after your business or trade craft?  Why should actors and famous musicians be any different?  Actually, I’d wager they welcome pointed, thoughtful questions far more than the typical Oh my god, I loved you in Carnivore Flying Fish From Mars 6: The Spawning! What was it like to be eaten by mutated, laser-shooting piranhas?  How awesome was it that you got to fondle Susan St. Patricia’s boobs onscreen and get paid for it? 

Those can be fun stories too, but you gotta know when to time em.  Bring that up later in the conversation, and chances are Malcolm McDowell will spin yarns about filming the orgy scene from A Clockwork Orange that will make your fucking head spin.  He told me about it, and some other day I’ll tell you about it too.

Maybe. 

To sum up, then, I firmly believe that saying hi or engaging a celebrity in conversation is contextual.  (Paul Newman infamously talked about being asked for an autograph while taking a leak by the guy in the urinal next to him.)  Be polite and friendly.  Of course, deep down they’re mostly narcissistic, insecure little children whose mommies never loved them and whose daddies got drunk and beat the shit out of them, which is why they do what they do in order to attain the accolades and love of millions in surrogacy, but remember, they’re people too, who sometimes are truly interested in telling you how great they are, but at others time just wish to be left the hell alone. 

Enter me.  Sometime in 2008 or 2009, when I lived in Altadena, I used to take hikes up above the top of Lake Ave., which abuts against the foothills of the lovely San Gabriel Mountains.  There are miles and miles and miles of trails in those foothills that go up as high as Mt. Wilson, at 5,712, and the site from which most of Southern California’s television and radio is broadcast.  The trailhead at the Cobb Estate atop Lake Ave. was about a mile and a half from the “Love Shack” where I lived for seven-plus years at Lake and Altadena Dr., so I used to hike up into the San Gabes from the Cobb Estate on a fairly regular basis and trudge up to the site of the long-demolished “White City” on Echo Mountain.  A hotel was built there in the late 19th century, a marvel of engineering for the time, but time, the fires and the remoteness soon took their toll, leaving behind only a few fragments of the hotel’s foundation, tennis course and tracks for the electric rail line that shuttled guests up and down Rubio Canyon. 

My absolute favorite time of day to be there was later on, especially in the spring and fall, when, on a clear day, you can see as far away as the San Bernardino Mountains to the east, south across the San Gabriel Valley all the way to the spires of distant Long Beach, and west to Palos Verdes and even Catalina Island, a good 30 miles offshore from Santa Monica.  The sun descending over the Pacific turns the distant waters red and orange as the dry winds mellow in the mountainous altitudes.  The view is truly something to see, especially when Los Angeles’s notorious smog layers take the day off.  

One such evening, I pulled my wagon up to Echo Mountain just as the sun was converging with the waters out beyond the Channel Islands.  I’d made good time, but I was puffing and thankful I’d make it to my favorite spot at the top of an old, broken stone staircase in time for sunset. 

As I walked toward the staircase I noticed a lone man seated on a slab of concrete that once served as the loading platform for the incline train that ferried visitors to the White City up Rubio Canyon.  The angle of body and the repose of his face clearly indicated that he was in contemplative, mindfully peaceful mode.  His forehead was high, the skin of his face slightly weathered and taut, but his look betrayed a practiced calmness.  His eyes had a keenness about them that was both piercing and familiar. 

Very familiar, as it turned out. 

The man’s eyes turned to me as I approached.  I’d seen him in many films.  Films I loved.  Filmed I would have given anything to ask about. 

His visage betrayed the realization of knowing that I knew who he was. 

I simply nodded my head and said hello.  He gave a quick “hi” in response.  I continued on past him and ambled up the steps to my favorite spot.  I unslung the backpack from my shoulders and pulled out a bottle of water.  As I settled into my spot, angled myself towards the west, the sun fired the ocean.  It was just the two of us at this particularly busy spot, the only sounds of human activity the constant stream of traffic passing along the 210 freeway in the valley below.

If I were Tim Roth, the absolute last place I’d ever want to be harried would be atop Echo Mountain at sunset. 

And so we two, a fine English star of screen and stage, and a New Jerseyan just trying to make an honest buck or two, sat not 30 feet apart, separately but equally human, and sharing silently this elegiac experience of another’s day finity.  Probably contemplating the same things: life, love, death, art, family, sex, the meaning of it all. 

If Mr. Orange had just shut his mouth at the end of Reservoir Dogs, maybe Harvey Keitel wouldn’t have shot him in the head.  Maybe he’d even have lived long enough to get to a hospital. 

Maybe. 

Maybe not.

A view from my "special seat" atop Echo Mountain taken at another date. Photo by Eric Althoff.

Postscript:

Not long afterwards, I pitched a story to Pasadena Magazine about interviewing Tim Roth, who by then, I had learned, was indeed a fellow Pasadena resident.  His turn as the villainous Emil Blonsky in the The Incredible Hulk was soon to hit theaters.  My editor, Sarah, gave me her blessing and go-ahead.  I was able to track down Mr. Roth’s publicist and sent a press inquiry…which was respectfully declined.  (I was actually scooped by Los Angeles magazine, whose profile of Roth ran the following week.)  Had I gotten the chance to actually do the interview, I would have brought up the time we “met” atop Echo Mountain.  Maybe someday I will get the chance.  

A Sensei’s Lessons

The land that gave me birth and raised me disappears beneath as the edifice of steel enforced by rocket fuel kicks away from terra firma and the dark, cold asphalt of Newark.  I was here to bury my sensei, Raymond J. Salapka, who taught me not only how to defend myself and how to better myself, but also of honor, integrity, the warrior code.  My friends I made in the dojo were there too, culled from all walks of life and socioeconomic status—a brotherhood (and sisterhood) of warrior spirit and conditioned respect.  His body was thin and frail, like an old, old man’s rather than a late-middle-aged man’s.  The cancer had taken him away—his warrior’s body, his indomitable spirit and joy for lite beer, sailing and discussing politics and religion late into the evenings. 

His experience was unlike what I knew growing up in the rural central New Jersey farm country.  He was a working-class guy from Hoboken who served in the National Guard, worked as a prison guard at a women’s penitentiary, loaded trucks overnights while collecting his pension.  Always his love for karate and passing on the traditions.  Always the aphorisms: “Remember where you came from” and “A man without honor is walking dead.” 

I made third-degree black belt under his tutelage and guidance.  I appreciated his dojo for its emphasis on discipline.  He cared for us.  He called us black belts his “trophies.”  He had little need for plastic-metal accolades; his students—especially his black belts—were his rewards.  (“You make black belt from me, you know you did something in your life.”)  He never lowered the requirements for that exalted rank, maintaining always that child black belts were a joke, that there was no possible way they could stand up against teenage or adult black belts in both stature and breadth of knowledge. 

He taught us to adapt to any situation.  Most of us are right-handed, but what if you’re attacked from the left?  (“You can’t say, ‘Excuse me, but can you wait until I get you on my good side so I can better parry your attack?’”)  In the days after his passing I found myself using my left hand more: to eat, to brush my teeth, to text my various dating partners. 

Be aware of your surroundings, he always said.  I grew up in the country, whiter than white, where the worst danger was bullying.  I was bullied often but never found the courage to fight back until I was older.  Now people know better.  I can disarm them with a look or a properly wittified remark.  Sun Tsu once said the fight is over before the first arrow flies.  As an adult I’ve lived in some dicey neighborhoods and found myself in some questionable areas in my travels.  I emulated Sensei’s teachings: look like you belong, don’t make yourself a mark. 

Be aware. 

Be ready for anything.  Including the fact that I might be called upon to move to a college town in the middle of a state that is flatter and colder than anything in my experience.  I’m an east coaster who came to adulthood in the sunny California climes.  Always a major airport at the ready to go elsewhere.  Now the nearest major airport to my address is 150 miles north and two-plus hours by car.  It’s not my town; it’s not where I belong. 

But it’s where I am.  I must accept and adapt.  My blood has thickened against the onslaught of winter’s cries descending from Lake Michigan, blanketing the Plains with the wrath of winter and the snows of nuclear whiteout.  Mother Nature cares not that where I grew up it was never this cold; she pays no heed to the fact that the lion’s share of my adult life was spent in Paradise, where a chilly day meant the fifties, where there was no such thing as a rain date or a snow delay. 

I can elect to fight the river’s course or go with it.  I can plant my feet into the mud at its bottom and curse the rapids, or I can allow it to take me to where I must be.  I can look for ports along the way, for bends and twists in its marathon.  When time to move, I can swim to shore or take the fork. 

But for now I must remain in this university town, so far removed from what I know and expect.  I must adapt. 

I must pay my bills. 

“Stay out of this debt shit,” he always told me.  That’s one I have failed at, Sensei.  Two years out of college and I was in 12 grand’s worth of credit card debt.  It took years, but I killed it.  Then it killed me again and returned to the same degree.  Jobs were hard to come by—long-term ones even harder.  I was laid off four times in less than 24 months from 2011-2013.  My savings vaporized.  My stomach again shrinking afore the unceasing tide of penury.  It was a member of Jersey Bushido Kai who took me in, gave me a place to rest my head during one of those bouts of unemployment, asking not for rent but only for help with utilities.

“The time to strike is when the opportunity presents itself,” as the code of karate goes.  A message came in back in November from this town in southern Illinois that housed the largest university in the state.  Would I be interested in coming to work for them?  Here was a full-time offer.  With benefits.  But in a place unfamiliar and unknown.  Away from all and everyone I had known.

At 17 I left New Jersey for California without knowing a soul west of the Mississippi.  I was younger then.  I figured it out.  I stayed for 15 years.  I can do it again now. 

I’ll keep watching for the next opportunity, continue to plug away.  I will go with the current, Sensei.  Southern Illinois is where I’m supposed to be right now.  Maybe not forever, but for now.  Paying my bills is good.  Getting out of debt is even better. 

I am, as Neil Diamond sang, caught between two shores—not in my home state of New Jersey nor in my adopted home state of California.  I’m somewhere else, somewhere new.  Finding my way and allowing it to find me. 

Hours before the call that Sensei had died, I dreamt I was back in the dojo.  All of the other black belts had students to promote; I had none.  I have never taught, never yet carried on the traditions to others.  Most of what I know I keep for myself but for the times of intercourse and intellectual discourse with others.  But I have yet to “pass on” what I know or any traditions from the past.  I have not married or procreated—nor do I wish to.  What I am stays with me.  When I am gone, nothing need be left behind.

Is that being selfish?  Shouldn’t I pass on his lessons?  The knowledge?  The kata (forms), the art of martial science and the techniques honed over 30 years in my gi (uniform)?  I look back on that dream differently now: I need not have students, but I can comport myself in an honorable fashion and rather be the example of the bushido warrior.  Influence by action and deed and bearing rather than through lecture and elocution. 

Like Sensei, I too am a sailor, having embarked on vessels onto both the Atlantic and Pacific.  While listening to one of Sensei’s black belts deliver the eulogy, I regretted that I never had the chance to sail with him on the lake in Pennsylvania in his beloved sailboat, but I imagined myself with my bow pointed towards the horizon, the hull cutting the waves and him beside me, laughing at the tomfoolery of the other sailors nearby us who weren’t having as much fun. 

I’m going to miss him.  All those fun times and the workouts at his old home in Phillipsburg and all the lessons in his basement dojo and all the beers consumed in his garage in Easton.  His senior-ranking student held to Sensei’s wishes and helped take everything down from his dojo walls to be spread among his black belts.  My inheritance is his plaque commemorating his promotion to third-degree black belt and dedicated by his students.  The other is a framed credo of the bushido warrior’s code as interpreted by Sensei.  It shall hang in my bedroom in Urbana, Illinois, to give me reflection and guidance each morning and evening…to allow me to refocus amidst the rather libertine lifestyle I have fashioned for myself as an often heedless, self-centered voluptuary. 

Take the dojo with you.  Take the honor and his lessons, kid.  You can still be yourself, but remember what you’ve learned.  Take New Jersey and California and karate with you in your heart to where you now return.  Place is less important than placement.  What I bring to my current home is the sum of my experiences and knowledge, to be exchanged and refined and expounded upon with those with whom I interact in the Midwest.  It will make me better.  My education continues.

As shall my life in martial arts.  Sensei promoted me to third-degree black belt in December 2006—the same degree he was when his students gave him the plaque that I now own.  It was to be the last promotion I will ever take from him.  I’m far less concerned with future feathers in my cap than with enjoying life and growing as a person.  I’ll study more karate.  More music.  Learn more, converse more, travel more in accordance with one final bromide:

“The ultimate aim of karate lies not in victory or defeat but in the perfection of one’s character.”

I aim.  With your help, Sensei, even shall I never achieve it, I will continue to try.

Hollywood Days and Night(mare)s: Being SWAT-ed

In the spring of 2003 I was working as a production assistant--or PA--for a TV production company at the Hollywood Center Studios.  For those who aren't familiar with that acronym, a PA might more commonly be referred to as a gopher, as in "go for" shit that people who make more money than you request (the animal equivalent of this is the game of fetch).  This can be anything from a run to Staples for office supplies, hitting up Smart & Final for food for the drones and ogres who make the "magic" of TV happen (this was my specialty, actually) or simply driving about the greater L.A. area on whatever menial tasks need doing.

Whatever euphemisms you might choose to apply, PA-ing is basically the bottom rung on the Hollywood ladder.  (Even interns get to leave whenever they want for the simple reason that they don't get paid.)  It's long hours for little pay and even less recognition.  (However, I did get to move up, but more on that another day.)  If you don't want to do the work, there are a hundred others fresh off the bus from nowhere who will do it just for the chance to work in "the Industry."

Actually, I didn't so much mind going on "runs."  I'm a car guy, and alone on the roads of L.A. I could commune with the music, Howard Stern or my own thoughts and get paid a token mileage stipend for driving around town on official business.  (Funny how the actual mileage traveled was more than frequently artificially inflated on reports by myself and the other bottom feeders.)  It was also a great way to get to know the megalopolis of the Los Angeles area and discover all of the nooks, crannies and byways heretofore unknown even to someone who had been in town for over six years.  Plus, runs provided a way to escape, even if for a few precious minutes, the egomaniacs, wastoids, burnouts and fuckheads back at the office who constitute the backbone of the entertainment business.

One schematically sunny Southern California day, I was sent across the hills to the ABC/Disney HQ in Burbank on an errand whose purpose I have long since lost to the entropy of time.  So I navigated north in my 1993 teal-blue Toyota Paseo out of Hollywood along Cahuenga Blvd., turning right on Barham, which turned into Forest Lawn as it snaked past the eponymous cemetary, and through the hills above Burbank and down onto Riverside Drive next to the 134 freeway.

The ABC headquarters is, to my eyes, a rather dyspeptic edifice that tries too hard to make you think of their Disney overlords with its Mickey hat from Fantasia crowning the front entrance and general sprinkling of the fairy dust from Walt's loins reminding you that you are, in fact, in Tinseltown.  That said, the lobby of the building actually boasts a rather decent collection of vintage photos of the construction of various studios in and around Burbank in the last century.  I recall looking at a B&W  photo of some important-looking men in business attire turning up earth at the groundbreaking for some facility and thought to myself, "They're all dead."

Anyway, after parking my Paseo in the delivery area of the parking structure, for some strange reason I found the door where I'd entered the facility on previous runs for some reason blocked to pedestrian traffic.  I recalled that there was a large footbridge from the parking structure to the corporate offices, so I traversed the raised pathway.  To my relief, the door at the end of the bridgeway was unlocked.  I pulled it open and...

...my eyes beheld the backs of a group of men in SWAT gear, assault rifles drawn.  My brain tried to find logical explanation for this, but all my synapses can fire upon is that I have stumbled inadvertently into a police hostage situation.

Then I hear, from just down the hall, "OK, go!"

The men of the SWAT team began marching in formation down the hallway before turning a corner, their weapons still drawn.

No police situation.  No armed insurrection against Walt's progeny or their hangers-on.  Nope, I'd just stumbled, rather inadvertently, onto the filming of an episode of Alias.  It had been an AD (assistant director) telling the actors in SWAT attire to begin their march for a take.

Fortunately, no one saw me, and I was able to slink away and back to the garage to ask the attendant where I should go for the long-forgotten task for which I had been dispatched from the other side of the hills.

Let that be a lesson: In Hollywood, nothing is as it seems.  But in nearby Burbank, clearly the locations departments sometimes forgets to block off a hot set.

On This Whole Aging Thing

Today is my 35th birthday.  Maybe 11 or possibly 12 years ago, I began a little ritual of sitting down and just writing for an hour every year on the anniversary of my birth about whatever comes to mind.  Topics typically range from work, to life, love, death, friendship, sex, philosophy and the general state of my affairs.  I haven’t exactly been the best student at keeping up with this self-imposed tradition, but since this is one of the “big ones”—and because I actually have some things on my mind to say—I thought that as I celebrate the end of my 35th go-round of this little blue ball floating out in the ether for reasons we know not, I figured it was high time to pick up the quill and again ruminate on all things that face me as I stare down the beginning of year 36 of EFA. 

As with everyone else, perhaps one of the surest signs of age I perceive is in my physical appearance.  A few more gray hairs, a few more wrinkles, more of a beer-saving compartment at my midsection than there used to be.  Losing weight is harder than before (although I am typing during the midst of an 11-day cleanse, which is helping in that particular regard), I’ve now been dealing with a bad lower back for six years, I seem to sleep more and get tired just a little bit more easily.

Honestly, other than that, things are pretty good, and for my health I’m thankful.  My friends and I have been grousing about the descent of our bodies from the tip-top peak shape of our early twenties for close to a decade now.  With medication, exercise, yoga and various other methodologies, I’ve been able to get by reasonably well in spite of my two herniated discs and ankylosing spondylitis—a rare form of arthritis that typically manifests when a male is in his late twenties (mine popped up at 29).  My jogging days are long since behind me thanks to these maladies, but I can still hike, bike, walk fast and do a little bit of running within reason.  My heart rate gets up several times a week, and I’m beginning to eat a little better.  Partly because I don’t burn off calories as briskly as I used to, partly because I just want to live a little healthier as I careen towards my “middle ages.” 

I’ve been on mood-altering medication for over three years at this point.  I’ve suffered panic episodes and depression off and on since I was 15.  Three years ago, while working at “the magazine” and things went to shit, it got so bad that I could no longer function healthily.  I started out on the lowest possible dose of an SSRI, and thus far have only had to up the dosage once (although, for various reasons, I may be due for another upage).  Without question, this has wrought a major, positive change in my life.  I’m still me, I still get down in the dumps sometimes, still sometimes wring my hands in agitation on occasion, but generally things have leveled off to a far more manageable degree, and I’m not going through daily life a walking wreck anymore—as I was before the meds started. 

And join the club.  Many or most of my friends are now—or have been at some point—on mood-altering medications of some order.  I firmly believe the stigma has gone away, and there’s greater compassion nowadays for the very real phenomenon that unbalanced brain chemistry can be as hazardous a premise as cooking up Walter White’s “blue”: Handled haphazardly and incorrectly, stuff’s gonna ‘splode.  (And just look to such sad events as Newtown, the Navy Yard, the Colorado “Joker” shootings and elsewhere for what can—and does—happen when potentially dangerously imbalanced individuals don’t get the help they need.) 

My career has been on a slow, intermittent burn since I went full-time freelance three years ago.  I’ve made enough to survive, if not to thrive.  Flush times invariably are followed by the fallow.  At present, things are fallow: I was laid off from my most recent contract editing job middle of August and have had absolutely no income in a month and a half’s time.  Last I checked (and I need to recheck) I will not qualify for unemployment again until after Thanksgiving.  If I can’t get work in my virtuosity fields of editing, writing, film and TV production or vocal arts, by the holidays I’ll most likely be taking your order at Ruby Tuesday’s. 

I’m not “above it.”  In my life I’ve done absolutely every possibly low-paying, thankless job you can think of.  I’ve stuffed envelopes for two consecutive days for $8 an hour.  I’ve bussed tables, sold my soul to focus groups, given cheap tours of my alma mater, laid sod in the hot California sun and even worked for a medical company that produced anal probes.

Seriously.

Sure, I have a college degree; so what?  That makes me no more special than the two of diamonds.  I happened to enter the workforce right after the dot.com bubble burst, and then came 9/11, Enron, Iraq, the global financial crisis, outsourcing and the implosion of the print industry at the hands of the Interwebs.  Before I ever went to college, I worked decidedly thankless, blue-collar jobs for not much money.  I’ve never had too much pride to do it again to make ends meet. 

As a friend of mine once said, the world doesn’t owe you a damn thing.

My only solid job prospect at present is in Washington, DC.  I interviewed there three weeks ago, was told nine days ago I’d made it to the next round and would soon hear more, and have since heard nothing.  My daily grind consists of sending out upwards of 20, sometimes 30, resumes per day. 

Do the math yourself.

I’ll get by.  I always do.  And there are many, many others out there who are far worse off than myself.  I’m in the enviable position of having to provide solely for myself.  I’m not married, I have no children (that I know of), no pets and my parents are still relatively with it and still working. 

Every year, my dad inevitably asks how I “feel” about turning another year older.  I always shrug: “It’s just a number.”  People who worry that they aren’t hitting certain goalposts by certain years are just setting themselves up for disappointment and surefire disquiet.  Yes, I’m closer to my end than this time a year ago, but I stand by my assertion that the thirties are way better than the twenties!  There’s more self-confidence, you care less about lots of the little things, have an easier time letting some things go, and certainly more ease with casting out those negative influences in your life.  I have no time for negativity and Debbie Downers.  I’m not your therapist; get a fucking shrink. 

Listen, we all get down now and again, but I’m not talking about garden-variety depression.  I’m talking about people who never, ever can be happy, even for a moment.  You know the type…you can show up at their house with a giant chocolate cake studded with diamonds and covered with hundred-dollar bills and they’d still find something to complain about.  These are the same people who never have anything to add to the conversation that doesn't directly revolve around themselves and their own neuroses.  Who keep recycling the same five uninteresting stories and bitch and moan about the exact same shit year after year after year after year without ever making any steps whatsoever to change their lot—people whose 2013 incarnations you could swap out for their 2003 incarnations without any noticeable difference…the two versions would likely even yap the same shit in unison. 

George Carlin put it best: “God, people are fucking boring!”

Fortunately, I was blessed with ADD, meaning that I’m perfectly capable of tuning you out if you start boring me, even though it appears that I’m still paying attention.  All you gotta day is repeat back a few phrases the other person says and they’ll think you care.  Meanwhile, I can go on thinking about organizing my sock drawer or what movie I’m going to watch that night while you prattle on incessantly about how you can never get enough together to move out of your parents’ house. 

I think I’m gonna stop doing that, however.  Get ready for more honesty than you ever wanted. 

Ten years ago, I certainly believed I’d be married by 35.  Such has not proven the case for a whole host of reasons.  For one, I’m picky and bore easily.  If she doesn’t fascinate me, I’m certainly not going to pretend.  I’ve been in love and in extreme like many times over the past half-decade.  For various reasons, none of those persons were willing to go the distance with me.  Or even try.  I was in a relationship for the last few years of my twenties; that person and I currently do not speak. 

Since the Ex and I split, I’ve enjoyed a few unbridled years of serial dating and a playboy mindset.  My attitude after 30 was come one, come me…I mean, er, come all.  I gave anyone a chance for a few years.  Partly to get some experience under my belt, partly to see if there were others out there with whom I could genuinely connect.  There were a few contenders, ones with whom I felt a serious connection and desire to up the level from cas to something more meaningful and ditch all other comers.  This may sound arrogant, but in every such instance, it was all…their…fault.  I’ve been at fault a number of times in my dating life, but whenever, in the past five years, I’ve expressed a serious desire to build something more serious, the woman has been the one to put the kibosh on anything. 

I was raised with the premise that men are commitment-phobic, and that women want to settle down and get serious.  While there’s definitely some truth to that, what most women don’t realize is that when a guy finds the right girl, he’ll move heaven and earth (and occasionally hell) to make it happen.  I did my best in a number of instances these past few years to move the universe, to give and give and be accommodating and meet halfway.  Each time I was met with outright rejection and a lack of even the willingness to attempt a compromise. 

So I continued my playboy life.  That is, until about a month or so ago.  Granted, I’m unemployed and could be moving anywhere for a new job, but while on a date last month, I basically decided that I’d had enough.  Not because of anything this person said or did, but largely because the conversation was entirely her-centric, she asked me no questions, and I felt like I was only there to validate all of the sordid tales of her previous dating experiences.  She didn’t do anything improper or piss me off in any serious way, but I basically didn’t care.  I just wasn’t into the game anymore. 

I came home that night and deleted all of my online profiles.  I no longer pursue or “play the game.”  Honestly, I’ve had my fun.  I’ve been out of that previous relationship for five years.  I had a specific number in mind of people I wanted to hook up with before my next serious relationship.  Not only did I meet my number, I’ve more than doubled it. 

So what?  Well, for its own sake, the experiences were fun, great for the stories, great for themselves.  Sex is usually fun (although not always, but those are tales for another day).  I learned more about myself as a person and as a potential companion.

More importantly, I learned what I don’t want in a partner.

So now I enter an age where most of my contemporaries are married, remarried, divorced or in long-term relationships.  The same people are single season after season for their own reasons.  I’ve tried.  I really, really tried to get into a relationship many times since I turned 30 and became a serial dater. 

I also realized something more existential of late.  Someone asked me recently where I pictured myself in five or ten years.  I rattled off the list of accomplishments: successful author, maybe with a few short films produced under my belt, singing with a cover band, maybe going back to California to live in Santa Barbara, more travel, more fun, more adventures, trying out more new beers wherever I go.  Basically, more or less what I do now.

It occurred to me in the telling, however, that at no point did I mention a significant other being in the equation.  At first I thought that I should be sad about that, but then I pulled myself back from that brink.  It’s OK.  Actually, it’s better than OK.  First of all, as I mentioned earlier, at 25 I forecast I’d be married by now.  Making projections about your future is a fruitless endeavor given that no one can see his or her own destiny in advance. 

But more than that, I think of late I’m beginning to come to some semblance of peace with the notion that for the here and now, I can’t see a mate really adding anything significant to my life.  All of my major trips of the past few years (Australia, New England and Canada, California on several occasions) have been on my own, without friend or family of any kind by my side.  I get to make all of the decisions and do what I want to do when I want to do it.  There’s no jostling for consensus or jousting for position.  It’s I, me, mine, all the time. 

And I meet people along the way.  One of the best things about traveling alone is picking up with strangers in strange lands for activities and impromptu fun.  Or visiting friends of yore and grabbing a bed or a couch for the night without having the baggage of a second person to bunk.  For my 32nd birthday I flew up from home in L.A. to Eugene, Oregon, to visit a girl I was seeing at the time.  For my 33rd birthday two years ago, I snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef off of Cairns on the first full day of the three-week tour; that night, several of my tourmates and I went out for drinks and painted the town red (I got absolutely awful food poisoning from that night’s dinner, but that’s for another time). 

The fun is wherever I go.  It requires no preparation or suitcases of party aids. 

Look magazine once published an article with sociological data that claimed that if a man does not marry by 35, the odds are he never will. Rather than huff and puff at this, I choose to see it another way: I am the patron saint of bachelorhood!  Boys, you be boys as long as you want to, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Our society haaaaaates single people with a passion.  Don’t believe me?  Try going to a wedding alone, and the questions range from “Where is your wife or girlfriend?” to “Are you gay?” My answer to all such inquiries is the same: fuuuuuuuucccck you!!!!  I don’t need to explain myself to you.  If my being solo here makes you uncomfortable, then maybe you should keep a better eye on your date.  After all, they have been known to be found with me doing shots at the bar.  I’m just sayin’. 

I guess I’m just dealing with a different mode of thinking at present.  For so many years I’ve been focused on finding “the one” but still taking time out for “the ONES” who came along in the meantime.  But I’m tired of the search.  Honestly, I do pretty well at rockin’ and rollin’ on my own.  If I need to scratch the proverbial libidinous itch on occasion, I can—and will.  That’s not been a problem since I pulled myself out of that self-hating morass of my twenties and into the “here I come” modality of my thirties. 

To wrap things up on a slightly more morbid note, last month I read a story on CNN about a Kansas City sportswriter who, on his 60th birthday,put a gun in his mouth.  He was healthy, successful, not depressed, in no physical pain and had no terminal disease.  He basically decided that 60 was…enough.  Better to go out then, he reasoned, than to become old and infirm and losing his mind to senescence. 

Now before you all race to the phone with your fingers above the “9” and the “1” keys, let me just say out loud that I have no intention whatsoever of doing harm to myself.  Firstly, doing such a thing is simply not my style.  Secondly, there are still, as Walt said on Breaking Bad two weeks back, “things I have to do.”  Like finish my book, which is alllllmost done!  I want to publish it, tour with it, talk about it, and then move on to something else.  There’s plenty of projects left for my time and efforts.

But here at 35, I find myself looking backwards instead of forwards.  Most of the goals I ever set for myself have been met.  Items have fallen off the bucket list like dried rice on flypaper.  I’ve been to 39 states.  I’ve traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and Mexico.  I’ve been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Oktoberfest in Munich (and next month, the Great American Brewfest in Denver).  I’ve been in plays with major movie stars.  I’ve sung at the Hollywood Bowl.  I’ve been on TV and in the newspapers.  I’ve written for newspapers and national magazines.  I got up on stage with a cover band in front of dozens of my high school classmates at our 15-year reunion in 2011 to sing “American Girl” and was the belle of the ball.  I’ve been at a party where there were 100 naked women just walking about.  I’ve dated a lot of women.  Read tons of books and seen even more movies.  I’ve met several of my heroes, including Bill Maher, Conan O’Brien and Jeff Bridges.  Been to well over a hundred rock shows.  Lived on both coasts.  Met oodles of rock stars, movie stars and various other celebrities.  Made friends by the boatload. 

I’ve had sushi and sake in Salt Lake City, for fuck’s sake. 

Some people never do a damn thing; I’ve done so much.  I could go out today like that Kansas City sportscaster a happy man.  I have no desire to procreate—and have taken proactive steps to ensure that end.  I lack the egocentric premise of “passing on” items and traditions to a new generation.  When in the Outback, I learned that when someone in the Aboriginal community dies, there is a week of wailing and mourning, after which point the departed is never spoken of again.  Ever. 

Why do we feel this need to be immortal by procreating beyond ourselves?  Personally, I’d rather tear out my path while I’m here and do as much damage while I’m here.  No one ever need follow or pick up the pieces in my wake. 

To answer my father’s question, no, I am not bothered by 35 any more than I was by 34 or 30 or 22.  Life is a journey, and I’m enjoying mine.  Even though I look at my past as fulfilled, I realize I’m still peaking.  There’s much left to be done.  Much left to see.  Much left to do. 

More stories for me to share with the rest of you.

And now I have written for one hour and 40 minutes.  I think this year’s birthday goal has been accomplished. 

See you at 36.