What I have to do

There are a lot of things I don't have to do. I don't have to wear dress socks with sandals. I don't have to pretend to enjoy the music of Leonard Cohen. And I certainly do not have to agree with your conclusions just because I agree with your premises.

Let me back up a bit here. During the vice-presidential debates, nearly a month back,  moderator Martha Raddatz asked Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, respectively, to state his position on abortion. Ryan responded that he believes life begins at conception and that those who agree must then consider themselves pro-life and support pro-life policies, presumably as dictated by the Republican Party. That's when I said, "Step back, Loretta!"

I'm going to state for the record that I'm not trying to start a debate about abortion, nor do I have the slightest interest in changing anyone's opinion. I'm pro-choice but if you hold another position, fine. Have at it. However, I am quite adamant about contesting Mr. Ryan's bold assertion. I have a semi-firm belief that, yes, human life does begin at conception, but for me there is no dotted line connecting that belief to support for spousal notification or forced ultrasound laws. I can explain this seeming contradiction with two friendly little terms: nuance and context.

Nuance: The recognition of a zygote as human life is a long, long way from recognizing that zygote as a human being. I do not, for example, consider an acorn the equal of a oak tree, even though the humble acorn is the origin of every mighty oak. If I have planted an acorn and then a week later change my mind about its location, I do not summon a landscaper with a bulldozer to transplant it. That's because the acorn is not an oak tree and does not require or merit the same treatment. Instead, I go out to my yard with a goddamned spade, dig up the thing and plant it elsewhere. Similarly, I don't worry about offending a zygote, or hurting its feelings, or being sensitive to its emotional needs because it doesn't have those.  Someday, sure, but not now. Now it is a zygote, not a human being, and I treat it accordingly.

Context: The meeting of sperm and egg is a wondrous event, but it does not spontaneously take place on a kitchen table or in a library without human involvement; if it did, I'd be open to arguments about protecting it in whatever way possible. However, this miraculous joining happens inside the body of a sentient human being who has rights and preferences and all those things that make individuals who they are. Protecting a zygote that just appears in mid-air is much simpler than protecting one that's gestating inside an individual. So context matters, you see, and when we're discussing forcing sentient beings to carry pregnancies to term it matters even more.

Now, Joe Biden's reply to Ryan was something like I-agree-but-don't-try-to-force-my-beliefs-on-others, which is fine but not what I really hungered to hear. I find that many political-type philosophies are very simplistic and internally consistent but have few points of contact with the real world, and Ryan's was one of them. And I get really ticked off when someone tells me what I must believe. Yes, I agree with Ryan's central premise, but he and I could not disagree more on the real-world implications. So, Mr. Ryan, I have to pay taxes, stay gay, and die, but I do not have to agree with any of your damn conclusions.

Conservatives...this one's for you

And I mean that in a totally non-gloating way. This is a post-election post, if you haven't already guessed, and I'll get right to it.

This election, for me, was all about preserving the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. You'd think by now that all the press coverage about the thing would mean everyone understands what it does, but I find that most people who either support or oppose the law have no idea what it really does. I'm no health care expert but I will admit to knowing quite a bit about this law, so I will provide a thumbnail description. Boiled down, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does three things in terms of health insurance: regulate, mandate, and subsidize.

Regulate: The ACA imposes a raft of new regulations on insurers, foremost among them a ban on discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. There's also a ban on rescission, that practice of insurers canceling the policies of the seriously (and expensively) sick, based on some technical error in the medical underwriting process. Insurers can no longer impose lifetime caps on coverage, and must allow children to remain on their parents' policies until they are 26.  

Mandate: Nearly all Americans will be required to purchase health insurance, which spreads out the risk insurers must assume and lowers the cost insurers must charge. Those who are already insured may keep their policies if they like, and those who choose to go uninsured must pay a tax penalty. The IRS cannot attach wages to collect this tax, nor can it place liens on property, although it can withhold tax repayments.  

Subsidize: Those who cannot afford insurance will receive a subsidy from the federal government to help defray the cost. Currently, single people earning up to $44,000 a year qualify for subsidies. The poorest of the poor will qualify for Medicaid, which has been expanded for just this purpose. In addition, Medicare recipients saw the closing of the prescription drug “doughnut hole”, amounting to hundreds of dollars in savings every year.

There's more to the ACA, such as the the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel that will look for ways to enhance Medicare efficiency and cut waste and that, contrary to popular opinion, is prohibited by law from imposing coverage limits on recipients. I could go on and on.

Why am I going on about this? Because the ACA, while imperfect, is a good deal better than the system we had, a system that shut out tens of millions who were either unable to qualify for health insurance or unable to afford it. The ACA will ensure that those, like me, who are uninsurable on the private market, will have access to quality, affordable health insurance. No more discrimination, exclusions, or rescission. If you want health insurance you can have it. Period.

This is a good thing. I have conservative friends, and one in particular who, like me, would never, ever get past the medical underwriting process. Election night saw me smiling because I knew that he would never, ever again need to worry about being without decent insurance, and that his wife and son and friends and relatives would never have to worry on his account. And that's what politics is supposed to be about: solving problems for people. Not conservative people or liberal people; all people.

So, my conservative brothers and sisters, although for you this is a tough time, remember that we who voted against your candidate have your back. Even though you disagree with us, often vociferously, we're not going to let you go it alone. Even if you don't know it, our victory is your victory, and I for one am happy to share it.

Nah

I was feeling cantankerous this morning, and during my AM walk was thinking about stuff that lots of people think is true that I just think is false. So here goes.

Loving yourself is the greatest love of all. Anyone who has watched “Jersey Shore” should know that the last thing most Americans need is more self-esteem. Snooki and The Situation think they are just jim-dandy, thank you very much. Forget self-esteem; try a little self-confidence, which allows you to admit when you’re acting the fool and enables you to try to be better than you are.

I don’t care what people think of me. News flash: if people generally regard you as a smarmy, self-absorbed asshole, you probably are. I don’t recommend dedicating your life to pleasing others, but every one of us should occasionally check our internal compass against the reactions we elicit from others. We live in a world of human beings, and disregarding the way you impact them is arrogant and selfish. So care a bit, would you?

Each of us is a unique snowflake. So what? Each actual snowflake is a unique snowflake, but in the end they are just the crap we marvel over for five minutes and then complain about as we shovel it off our steps. Your uniqueness does not make you worthwhile – there are about six billion unique individuals on the planet and I don’t care to know most of them – your behavior does.

If I work hard and believe in myself, I will succeed. Uh-huh. That’s why every record is in the Top 40, every novel is a bestseller, and every dress ever sewn is worn on the red carpet. First you might want some talent, and then there’s this little thing called “luck” that can’t be induced or manufactured, but which often counts as much as hard work and self-confidence and, yes, even talent. De-couple your ego from any expectation that your work will be a commercial success and you really will succeed.

We should respect the beliefs of others. To quote the inimitable Lieutenant Worf: “Respect is earned, not given away.” People have all manner of foolish notions – Todd Akins, I am looking in your direction – but that doesn’t mean I need to assign them any credibility. Hell, I don’t respect every single human being I meet, so why the hell would I treat their beliefs any better? I grant people basic courtesy, but I reserve respect for those who have earned it.

The goal of life is to be happy. Happiness is an emotional state, and as such it comes and goes based on the way your hair looks today, or the condition of the weather, or the severity of traffic you faced on the way to work. Making a specific emotional state a life goal is just not going to work out for you. Concentrate instead on being the person you want to be; when you’re doing that, you’ll be happy more often than not.

Freedom

It's Independence Day, basically, so I thought I'd take some time to talk about freedom. I'm taking the long way around, so bear with me. The freedom part comes at the end.

When I was fourteen years old (or so), one of my classmates had a family tragedy that boggled the mind. His younger sister, Eileen, was killed in the playground of her school when a flagpole fell on her in the schoolyard. Yes, you read that correctly...she was hit by a falling flagpole. It's always terrible when a child dies, and doubly so when the cause of death is a freak accident. I was thinking about this the other day and it came to me that such a hideous event would have had a much wider social impact had it happened not in 1983 but in 2012.

As older readers will remember, news was very different back then; if you didn't catch something on the evening news, or read about it in the day's paper, you didn't hear about it, period. Oh, there was neighborhood talk, but most of that was wrong and even the most horrific and scurrilous gossip quickly gets stale. Today, news of that event would have been all over the Internet within minutes. There would be tweets, Facebook status updates, blog posts, threads on discussion groups. There would be video clips of interviews with the family, neighbors, school officials, local authorities. People in Bangladesh would have the same ability to get the story as those who lived one block from the school. Those who miraculously missed the initial information blast would forever be able to turn to Wikipedia.

Prompted by this media blitz, there would be criminal investigations into the maintenance staff responsible for making sure the flagpole didn't fall. Schools all over the nation would spend boatloads of cash taking down flagpoles and purchasing flagpole insurance. Parents would be told to send their kids to school with helmets, for use during recess play. There would be a raft of "Eileen's Laws" that would threaten civil and criminal penalties for shoddy flagpole maintenance. It would be a Wave-Motion Gun of fear and recrimination beamed directly to the PCs, iPhones and Twitter feeds of Americans from Maine to California.

We in America talk often about freedom, but there are two kinds of freedom, really. There is freedom to, which is what usually comes to mind. We have freedom to express ourselves, freedom to vote, freedom to choose our relationships and careers. We don't often consider freedom from, which is unsurprising since that particular liberty is much rarer. Before the Affordable Care Act we did not have freedom from insurance company abuses. We still do not have freedom from poverty, or freedom from illness, or freedom from losing our jobs. And, as the example of the flagpole shows, we don't have freedom from fear.

Fear is what separates what happened in 1983 from what would have happened in 2012. Because we didn't hear about poor Eileen non-stop, for days and days on end, we didn't spend much time worrying about the dangers of schoolyard flagpoles. Nor should we; flagpoles very rarely fall over and kill schoolchildren. Similarly, people are very rarely murdered, swimmers are very rarely attacked by sharks, and so on. Yes, these things do happen, and although it's wise to take sensible precautions to avoid them...well, you don't swim in shark territory when you're bleeding, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't ever swim anywhere.

Bad things happen, but as Bruce Schneier says, the definition of news is stuff that rarely happens. Just because something is blasted all over the Internet does not mean we should fear that it will happen to us, or to someone we know. Fear can't keep you from dying, but it sure can hold you back from living. And I'd like freedom from that.

That's me!

Last night before my volleyball game, I was chatting with someone I don't usually have the chance to chat with, and he asked, "Hey didn't I hear you're a magician?" I gently corrected him by saying I had worked as a stand-up comedian, and if he was disappointed that I had never pulled a rabbit out of my hat, he hid it well.

There was a time when I might have been annoyed by the question, but yesterday it just made me smile. I like the idea that I am now associated with all sorts of artistic, long-shot endeavors, which is something that, ten years ago, I would never have predicted. These days, having told jokes to drunken hostile crowds, and now trying to pitch my book to sober, hostile reviewers, I'm proud of the reputation. In fact, I'm even kind of disappointed he didn't ask me, "Didn't I hear you're a rodeo clown?"

(I'm not. Yet.)

Stuff I have learned

We've all learned our lessons over the years, and here's some of what I have learned from mine.

1. You can't save anyone.
2. Self-confidence is more useful than self-love.
3. One mind can contain diametrically opposed ideas.
4. Never confuse chutzpah for strength.
5. Always ask why.
6. Don't trust anyone who doesn't trust anyone.
7. Use your ears more often than your mouth.
8. If you say, "I'm not a racist, but..." you are a racist.
9. Self-absorption is not the same thing as self-awareness.
10. Grant the first favor for free, but charge for the second.
11. Don't interrupt; chances are you really don't know what's coming next.
12. Admit when you don't know the answer.
13. Better to fail because you didn't win than because you didn't try.
14. Context always matters.
15. If that apology contains a "but", you're not really sorry.

Memoir Monday: Giving myself a break

I read a book once in which a character and her friend have a genuinely creepy experience, but when it's over the friend insists that if they never again talk or think about it, why, it will have been as if nothing had happened. When I read that I realized two things. First, that could have described me; second, I was actually experiencing sympathy for Cersei Lannister. Yikes.

Notions or memories that frighten me are quickly whisked off by the Brain Gestapo, to spend their lives laboring in the Siberia of my subconscious. Of course, those things are never truly gone; I can't tell you how many times Dan's awakened me from one nightmare or another. No matter how deep the memory hole or well guarded the mental prison, those experiences are mine, but for a long time they reappeared only in my dreams.

Until three months ago today, that is, when I hit upon the idea of writing these memoirs. At first I thought I'd just post funny or light stories, but that seemed like just a suburb of Subconscious Siberia. If I were going to be truthful, however, it would mean not only confronting painful things from my past, but actually remembering them.

It's said that victims of abuse, particularly child victims, have a way of distancing themselves from the memories of the abuse, and in some cases forgetting entirely that they were victims. The longer I live, the more I think that can be true for all sorts of negative experiences. You can't make bad things un-happen, of course, but you can bury the memories so deep you forget where you put them. You still feel the emotional residue, however, even if you've lost contact with the memories from which they result. In the course of writing these memoirs I have regained contact, and although it hasn't always been fun, it's ultimately been rewarding.

If someone had suggested a year ago that I would publicly air, say, the story of my struggles with depression, I would have shuddered, but now I'm glad I did. The sharing doesn't change what happened, but it has changed my ability to understand and accept what I did. Just as important, I find I'm able to forgive myself for some of the tremendous mistakes I made along the way. And, no, this isn't the beginning of a paean about self-love; years of realty TV have taught me that the last thing most people need is to care more about themselves. However, I think I've come to learn that if I screwed up yesterday...well, I can do better today. The world's not going to stop turning on its axis because twenty years ago I fucked a bunch of losers in a lame attempt to fill the hole in my soul. In the grand scheme of things my mistakes are pretty small potatoes, and that's a pretty big relief.

So I'm going to suspend these memoirs for now, three months to the day I started them. Not that I've learned everything there is to know – hell, by summertime we may see the Return of Memoir Mondays – but there are other lessons to learn and other tasks at hand, most notably getting back to work on the second novel Dan and I are writing. And in any case I think it's best to take a break before I start thinking Cersei Lannister is just misunderstood.

So thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

Memoir Monday: You better work

The older I get, the less respect I have for intelligence and talent. Not that those things aren't valuable, but I've come to believe that the ability to work hard is just as valuable…and twice as useful. All three are in the same family, of course, but if there is room for only one of these siblings, I'd pick hard work every time.

Dan and I came up with The Duchess of the Shallows back in 2007 as an RPG. It was this vague idea of a thief operating in an urban setting that was something like Seattle and a bit like San Francisco, adding our own ideas, of course. As the game went on, the city became something distinct from either, and the character became less of an archetype and more of an individual. Soon enough we had Rodaas and its first named inhabitant, Duchess.

The game went on for a long, long time, and in November 2008, Dan surprised me by presenting me with a manuscript based on the game he'd produced as part of NaNoWriMo. He planned to have it printed and bound as something we had shared, which was sweet and romantic. However, when I read the manuscript, it felt more like a summary than a story, so with Dan's permission I began to enhance and enlarge it. Dan, may the gods preserve him, had recorded every single session, so I was always able to go back and check what we'd originally done in the game. After a month or so, I presented him with a dramatically expanded manuscript and a suggestion that we continue to work on the thing with the goal of eventually publishing it. Reluctant at first, Dan quickly came on board and we got to work. And for the next year we did, on and off, until in early 2010 we had in our grubby little hands a manuscript that was ready to send into the world.

In doing so, we learned some lessons about the world of publishing. The first was that publishers really don't want your damned book. They want the next James Patterson or JK Rowling, and the major houses won't even consider manuscripts from lesser, un-agented authors. We were neither Patterson nor Rice, nor did we have a literary agent, so we focused first on the small presses who were willing to take un-agented manuscripts. Turns out the small presses really don't want your book very much either, and we received rejection letters aplenty. The only avenue that remained was the literary agencies, who are the gatekeepers to the mainstream publishing industry.

We approached and were rejected by many, but in March 2011 we finally hit pay dirt with Rebecca Strauss of McIntosh & Otis. We were awed and delighted to have secured the representation of so substantial an agency, and although we were willing to work on the revisions Rebecca requested, we privately resolved that, no matter what, we would not lose control of our vision. I'm proud to say we never did, but in maintaining our grip on our vision we let the process slip through our fingers. Rebecca put us through months of revisions involving the addition of tens of thousands of words, and we engaged it all without a word of complaint. As spring turned into summer, and then summer into autumn, we began to wonder when this was going to end. We had dramatically expanded and improved the manuscript, which was originally scheduled to go before editors in June, but there we were in September with no sign that the revision process was anywhere near complete. Sure, we could revise indefinitely, but as any writer knows there is a point of diminishing returns, and we were keenly aware of the artists' prayer: "Let me finish this work before I fuck it up."

We felt uncomfortable pushing back, however; Rebecca was the only agent who'd agreed to represent us, and as anyone who's only gotten one invite to the prom knows, you dance with them what brung ya. Besides, she was thus our only point of entry to the world of publishing, so there was a definite power differential and it favored her. At the same time, we had been writing and rewriting our manuscript for more than half a year, and we were discouraged and demoralized enough to push back. And so we did, politely but firmly, stating that the manuscript was as good as it was likely to get and that we felt the time had come to unleash The Duchess of the Shallows upon the publishing world. We felt good about reasserting this control; even though the seas were stormy, we were finally steering this ship.

Rebecca felt otherwise, and when we took the helm she headed for the lifeboat. She unceremoniously ended our business relationship – by email, if you can believe it, which is kind of like getting dumped via text message. My initial reaction was anger at the way the entire situation had been handled, and relief that the seven-month revision process was finally over. Dan felt much the same, and that day we did two things. First, we went out for a walk to process the situation, our feelings, etc. Second, we began our final proof-read of the manuscript in preparation for self-publishing. The Duchess of the Shallows might die an ignominious death, but we were determined that it would do so on sale and not on our hard drive. And that's true whether we sell five copies or five hundred.

Self-publishing is not for the faint of heart. You not only have to write and edit a novel, but commission artwork, lay out the print file, format electronic versions, keep records, and of course conduct the costly, thankless, and endless task of promoting your work. Lots of things are like that: getting your master's degree, building a house, raising a child. If you're going to turn back every time you hit a bump in the road, you might as well not get in the car at all. So although the twins Intelligence and Talent can create your dreams, only their sister Hard Work can bring them to life. So whenever I go on a ride, I always save her a seat.

Memoir Monday: Behind the d20

When I told Dan the story of my first gaming group, he said it sounded like a VH-1 "Behind the Music" special, in which a band goes from rise to demise and back again. I laughed at the time, but the more I look back, the more insightful his comment seems. Although it would be cooler if we'd been musicians instead of D&D geeks, here's the story of our road to ruin.

I'd started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was fourteen, and from the first I was absolutely hooked. Back then, D&D was cool even though geeks really weren't, and I had a (very) small amount of notoriety for being of the few kids in my class who knew the game well. I played the game right into college, and when I was 19 was introduced to my first gaming group of adults.

And we had a blast. Burt was bold and fearless, ready to pit his character against any foe, no matter how fearsome. His chutzpah was infectious; in one battle he rallied the entire group against a dread underwater spectre, turning a near-rout into a smashing victory. Dennis was careful and calculating, and never committed his full resources to any battle unless he was certain we could win it. James was shamelessly power-hungry, but in such an endearing way that no matter what trouble he got us into we could never stay angry at him. He knew how to use power, too, which brought woe to more than one of our enemies. Sam was nearly telepathic in battle, able to tell just when an enemy at the point of exhausting his strength and willing to push him/her/it beyond that limit and into defeat. I was the sort-of leader, always coordinating efforts and concocting some crafty scheme to gain advantage over our foes, and more often than not, my schemes were successful. Our individual styles complemented each other, and we were a force to be reckoned with. We spent many an evening wiping out hordes of orcs, goblins and sundry critters, and matched our wits against craftier foes like warlocks and demons.

Back then our individual foibles were things we appreciated, and we got along equally as well outside the game, and quickly got to know each others' families and other interests. For me, being in a group in which I did not feel like an outsider was completely new...and completely welcome.

Going back to the "Behind the Music", it's been said that the same chemistry that can make a band rule can also make it explode, and so it proved for us. For each of our strengths there was an equally formidable dark side. My tendency to take charge sometimes manifested as an inability to accept and appreciate limitations and to release control. Burt's fearlessness could very easily give way to stubborn sullenness, and he seemed almost to delight in causing disruption and resentment. Dennis could be as cold as he was cautious, and seemed to have little problem taking advantage of others. James and Burt were having unrelated problems that added significantly to the tension around the table, and I was spinning slowly down into an ever-deepening well of depression. After a few years, these fault lines began to cause big ol' quakes. In-game difficulties became real-life problems, and attempts to resolve the various issues that arose often degenerated into grudge matches or on one occasion, a shouting match, which was one of the two times in my life I have ever raised my voice in anger. None of us was innocent, and no matter who started the fight someone else, often me, managed to make it worse.

We should have had a real talk about what was going on, but each of us was prevented by our individual issues. Burt was not the kind of guy to confront issues in a helpful way, Dennis too emotionally distant to try, and Sam and James, younger than the rest of us, were just unable to cope with the rising tension. As for me, I was too emotionally guarded to open up, and secretly fearful that the others would recognize me for the loser I thought I was. We tried again and again to recapture the spirit of those early years, but you can't make amends for mistakes you don't know you've made...and are still making

Before long we were all talking behind each other's backs, and knowing we were doing so, but after awhile there wasn't much we could say that hadn't already been said. We'd known each other for years and were as familiar as family, but less like the Bradys and more like the Bundys. I don't know why we stayed together for the years we did. Maybe, like any dysfunctional family, we just didn't think there was any other way for us to relate to each other. Relationships often run from scripts, and no matter how unhealthy those scripts may be, they offer comfort. Given where I was for so much of my life, I needed all the comfort I could get.

My engagement in therapy and subsequent recovery from depression sparked a realization that I needed to throw that script away. I decided – finally – that I was capable of building better relationships, ones that would not vacillate between familiar camaraderie and angry frustration. Not long after, along with Sam, I walked away, and before long the group collapsed. Looking back I see how sad it was, but at the time I was just relieved to get away from that emotional maelstrom.

Most “Behind the Music” specials end with the profiled band putting the past behind them and reuniting for another album and tour. I'm afraid this story does not have so rosy an ending. Sam and I are still close, and we both still see James, but Burt and Dennis went their own way. Dennis I've had no contact with, although Burt and I later – much later – made amends via email. I'm sad to say that missive was not the introduction to a renewed, healthier friendship. The five of us inflicted a lot of emotional wounds on each other, and time doesn't always heal those. There's some music you can make only once.

Memoir Monday: Revving on Rudeness

I typically get along best with polite people, probably because I take great pains myself to be polite. I don't take without asking or presume upon hospitality, and I try to phrase even harsh truths in the gentlest way possible. Rudeness puts me off, and yet I have this strange fascination with people who are blunt, even painfully so.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a biology teacher we'll call Ms. Chadwick. (Name changed to protect the sort-of innocent.) She was a round, bespectacled woman with hard eyes and a no-nonsense manner, which I suppose was an occupational necessity for someone who dealt with 15-year-olds all day. At the time, however, I resented it, probably because I had little interest in biology and even less in the rude woman who taught it.

And she was rude. She moved quickly, covered a lot of material and gave out a lot of work, and you either kept up or you didn't. To all appearances, Ms. Chadwick didn't care which. She was also notably unsympathetic to complaints that her standards were too high or her grading system too demanding. I distinctly recall her once saying, "When you take your car to the mechanic, you pay him for getting your car fixed, and not for trying. It's the same in this class. If you learn the material, you'll get good grades; if you don't, you'll get bad grades. I don't care how hard you try if you fail." Yikes. I did everything I could to avoid her gaze, and contented myself with silently hating her.

I limped through her class at first, maintaining a solid "C" average, but that came crashing down around March, when I just sort of gave up on school. The depression I conquered in my twenties had been with me all through high school, and although I was too young to cope by having sex with strangers, I was just old enough to blow off my studies. Turns out I was equally successful at both, and for my efforts I was rewarded on my next report card with a big fat "F" in Biology and English. My mother, not one to obsess over grades, asked me, "How do you fail English?" She never asked how I managed the same with Biology. Mothers always know.

Depressed I might have been, but I understood immediately that I had exactly three months to turn my grades around or else face (dramatic music) summer school. I hated school like fire, and the notion of spending three extra mind-numbing months there turned me from Depressed Slacker into Super Student. My biology textbook, formerly a nice way to prop open my locker door, became my best friend, and it accompanied me everywhere. I did every single assignment Chadwick handed out and turned them in with a smile, and begged for extra credit. Chadwick, never averse to working students like dogs, obliged by assigning various essays about mitosis and meiosis and other cell thingies in which I had formerly had no interest. In class I went from staring out the window to jumping to answer any question, counting on that good-ol' class participation credit. I was surprised to find I knew most of the answers. When we did our weekly, graded team drills, I found myself in high demand, which was new for me given I spent most of my high school experience practicing invisibility. I won that week for my team, and on the way out of class Chadwick said to me, "You've really turned things around this semester. Keep it up." That's not exactly gushing, but I was absurdly flattered nonetheless.

In May, we had to write a semester-ending essay in response to the question, "What is Science?" This was big-time for the sophomore set, and the competition was intense. All my hard work aside, I sensed I was the dark horse in this race, a feeling confirmed when I saw the mounds of research my classmates were conducting. There was no "Project Runway" back then, but if there had been, that was the moment Tim Gunn would have appeared to tell me that no matter what happened, I should be proud of what I had accomplished. So I decided to go all MTV unplugged – another TV show that had not yet materialized – and my essay answered the question of what science was with one word: why. I maintained that science began with one guy or gal, somewhere back in the deeps of time, asking why water never ran uphill or thunder happened. It was a gutsy call, but I believed it then and, looking back, I still do. So I turned in a two-page paper amongst the dissertations my classmates produced and then went back to my extra credit.

And do you know I won that sucker? Chadwick had a gimlet eye and an unsentimental heart, but she gave me full credit for it in front of the entire class. They were impressed and amazed - I was pretty good at being invisible - and it was the first time I ever felt like I'd accomplished something real in school. Sure, it was only a high-school class, but when you're 15, that's enough. At the year's end I got a nice fat "A" in Biology. I ended up with only a "C" in English, but my mother evidently decided two miracles were too much to expect and left me alone about it.

Years later – many years – whenever I encounter these utterly blunt, unsentimental people, I think of Chadwick and her who-cares-if-you-try philosophy. I can't say it was the best tack to take with children, but it spurred me to succeed and earned my grudging respect. I think that people often rise to the demands placed before them, and sometimes the best you do to help is to insist upon their best. That's not always polite, but it gets the job done.

The Duchess of the Shallows

Dan and I are excited to announce the release of The Duchess of the Shallows, the first in a series of novels set in the fog-shrouded City of Rodaas. The story features the redoubtable Duchess, whose adventures we hope you will enjoy as much as we do. We spent the better part of three years, and almost the entirety of the last three months, getting this work ready for its debut. Self-publishing is complicated and time-consuming, but we're ecstatic about the results.

Some of you are no doubt wondering, "Self-publishing? Weren't you guys working with a literary agent in hopes of a book deal?" We were, and I could try to soft-pedal this, but...she dumped us. I won't go into detail in this forum; suffice to say that after months of work it became clear that Rebecca Strauss was confident not in the story we wrote but in the one she envisioned. That might have been a great story, but not one Dan and I were interested in writing. Ironically, the more Rebecca pushed us in another direction, the more closely we came to understand our own vision. In a way, we couldn't have made this story without her.

Just as integral to this work was the amazing Amy Houser, creator of the gorgeous illustrations that grace the book. We were delighted to secure her services, and she bowled us over with every sketch. We could not have been more pleased with the work she did.

Although TDotS (that's our clever acronym) is set in an imaginary world where the supernatural is possible, it is not genre fantasy. Duchess will not quest to find the Sword of Destiny. She will not face off against King Sinister or Lady Evil. The story will not culminate in the ultimate battle of good versus evil. In TDotS, the scale is smaller and the stakes more personal, and all of the characters – Duchess, her allies, and her opponents – have motives that are genuine and understandable, if not always sympathetic.

On several occasions we've been asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?" The answer is YES. Post about TDotS on Facebook. Write a blog post. Tweet. Tell your friends. Recommend the book to your reading club. We hear most books are selected based on word of mouth, and all these methods help get that word out. And we are grateful for all of it.

Speaking of gratitude, we have to tip our hats to the people who gave our manuscript a look before it went public. There were many, and we're grateful to them all, but we have to call out those who spent particular time and effort: Daniel J. Linehan, Mark Fabrizi, Sean McGarry, Rosemary Auge, Rob Wetzel and Amy McClenahan. You folks are on the dedication page!

The book is available in print or in electronic form, and you can find links to both at Peccable Productions. You'll also find free sample chapters, so you can try before you buy. In time, we hope to add some audio files of Dan and me actually conceptualizing the Imperial City of Rodaas, and the sketches Amy made that, wonderful as they were, did not make the cut. Eventually, there will also be spoilers for the next book in the series, The Fall of Ventaris, so check back once in awhile.

In the meantime, enjoy!

Memoir Monday: Think, Think, Feel

One of the biggest problems with people, in my view, is that they feel when they should think, and they think when they should feel. I usually don't have the first problem, but boy, am I susceptible to the second. Fortunately – very fortunately – I started getting over it Halloween 1998.

I met Dan when I was twenty-eight, at a poetry reading in which I had for some reason consented to participate. I don't like much poetry, I don't write much of it, and up to that point had never inflicted my own on an unsuspecting world, but I was flattered to be asked. Unbeknownst to me, the dude who organized the reading had an ulterior motive for inviting me; namely, to meet a friend of his he'd also invited. This friend was Italian-looking and hot in a long, leather trench coat, and he very graciously complimented me on the poem I'd read, which was entitled "Blades." (I'll post it someday, if I can dig it up.)

The three of us repaired to a coffee shop afterwards, where Dan and I were able to chat while I ran Dan through my mental potential boyfriend check-list.

Grad student = good earning potential (+1)
Computer science major = intelligence PLUS good earning potential (+2)
Writer = creative tendencies (+1)
Lived locally = no long-distance problems (+1)
Hot-looking = hot-looking (+1)

When Dan revealed he was five years younger, however, my man-assessing algorithm dutifully churned out a result:

Younger = being second to reach every life milestone: turning thirty, getting backaches after exercise, becoming unable to get through medical underwriting (-15)

If you're counting, that worked out to -9, so I filed Dan away in the "just friends" cabinet and moved on…or tried to. Dan was not so easily filed away. When I showed up for the swing dancing lessons a local club was holding Monday nights, who was there? Dan. And since I did not have a partner, he graciously offered to stand in. My mental check-list ahemed:

Good dancer = good in bed (+1)

When others remarked on how moon-eyed Dan got when he looked at me, my checklist reminded:

Moon-eyes = emotional accessibility (+1)

My boyfriend-meter still read -7, however, until that Halloween saw me at a bar where there was to be a costume contest hosted by the Maneater from Manayunk, Stella. When I found out Dan knew Stella personally, my check-list pinged:

Likes Halloween = likes Halloween (+1)
Knows cool people = is cool person (+1)

I entered – and lost – the costume contest, and as I was preparing to leave the club with the friends I'd driven, Dan seized the moment and me, and socked it to me with a Casablanca kiss. My check-list chattered:

Good kisser + hot + smart + sweet = put away goddammed checklist and do something that just feels good for a change

And so I did, and still do.

Memoir Monday: The Rules

I am a rules-oriented person. I don't exit through the entrance, or turn on red where the sign says I can't…all that. And not matter how ill-founded the rule, I feel obliged to honor it and oddly guilty if I don't. It took only one Census to break me.

As you probably know, Congress is constitutionally mandated to conduct a great count of all Americans once every ten years, and to keep things simple our good representatives have decided the count will be taken during years ending in "0." Since Wolf Block had folded at the end of 2009, come 2010 I was ready for temporary work and the Census seemed as good an opportunity as any. You have to take a test to qualify, though, so I took mine on a wet morning in February, at this dodgy-looking storefront on Washington Avenue. It was pretty simple stuff, I thought, but the proctor was so enthused by my perfect score that I felt guilty for not being equally excited. Six weeks later I received a job offer, and four days after that I became an office clerk employee of the Census.

My first task, along with a dozen or so other new employees, was to fill out a raft of paperwork, certifying that I was a citizen or else legally authorized to work in the United States, and that I hadn't been convicted of any felonies. At that point, one of my new coworkers piped up to ask if indictments counted as felony convictions. I reflected, "If you have to ask, then, yes, they do", and from her look, the gal in charge was thinking the same thing. The next step was to take an oath, swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I perked up; perhaps the job of office clerk involved more beat-downs and curb-stomping than I'd expected. (For the record, during my brief tenure as a Census employee, I was not required to thwart a single enemy.)

Then, we were told The Rules, and there was an abundance of them. No coming in early or staying late without explicit permission from a supervisor. No skipping lunch. No skipping morning or afternoon breaks. No taking a morning break less than 90 minutes after your start time, or less than one hour before your lunch break. No combining your morning or afternoon breaks with your lunch break. No fractions on your time sheet. Holy cow.

My primary task as a Census office clerk was conducting phone interviews to hire other temporary employees, primarily enumerators (the folks who go door to door) and the people who supervise them. Those folks earned way more than office clerks, and I couldn't help but wish I'd landed one of those jobs. Anyway, there was no real judgment involved in this work; I simply asked a bunch of yes-or-no questions from a script, recorded the responses, and if the respondent gave a certain number of affirmative answers I offered the job. It wasn't bad work, really; I like chatting with people, and once I completed reading the script, I had the opportunity to do so. I remember speaking with one veteran (vets were given preference for hiring, and deservedly so) who seemed lonely and really delighted not only to get the job but to speak to someone. Hearing "Gilligan's Island" playing in the background, I obliged him but asking him which episode he was watching, and commiserating over just how foolish it was for the castaways to repeatedly entrust the title character with that week's escape plan. After I hung up, I was told another rule: no socializing with the interviewees. Argh.

The Census Bureau is under the aegis of the Department of Commerce, and there are folks who have worked there Since Time Began and have little idea how the world has changed. I was assigned to one such staffer who set me to collating forms and explained to me in great detail – and utterly without sarcasm – how I might fasten them together using a device that inserted a thin metal clip right through the paper. I looked at her for a long moment. "So…you're asking me to use a stapler?" She nodded, proud that I'd caught on so quickly. Mother of all creatures great and small...

I didn't last very long at the Census, but before I left I took great pleasure in taking my morning break a mere 40 minutes before lunch, putting a fraction on my time sheet, and asking one of the interviewees her favorite brand of cereal. And I didn't feel one ounce of guilt. Who says government programs don't work?

Memoir Monday: The Best of Beginnings

Most of the best things in my life started from unlikely beginnings, and this is a story about one of those things.

I met Jack in 1994, the year that began the final phase of my downward spiral into depression. Although he came into my life when I was at my lowest and craziest, Jack saw something in me worth getting to know, and the oddest friendship was born. We had nothing in common except sexual orientation and a childhood of poverty. He liked house music and I was at the time getting into folk. He read very little and I read as if books would soon vanish from the earth. He was a conservative Christian (yes, and gay) who doubted evolution and I was a pretty dedicated atheist who put great stock by Darwin's theory. He had a great tolerance for people seen as freaks and kooks, while I just couldn't be bothered. There was a time in my life I would never have bothered with Jack either, but for some reason I was drawn to him.

Maybe it was because he was my first gay friend, and I his. We went to our first gay club together, naively betting that the person who did not hook up had to pay the toll on the way back. (We would up splitting the cost.) We rented movies we vainly hoped we could bring the other around to liking. ("Love Affair" still ranks as one of the longest two hours of my life.) We danced, scammed on guys, sang songs, and shared all of the life stuff we couldn’t share with anyone else. We were both promiscuous at that point in our lives, him happily and me crazily, and we compared notes about…well, things that probably don't have a place on this public blog. Our myriad differences did not divide us but made us more interesting, and after only a year it was like I'd known him all my life.

Things weren't all rosy, though. Even Jack's friendship couldn't fend off the deepest and longest depressive episode of my life, and he oftentimes bore the brunt. When I began dropping out of sight for days and weeks at a time, he kept calling until I called back. If I was emotionally numb when we started out for the evening I was smiling when we got back. When he landed a boyfriend, the first of us to do so, he was not put off by my confession at how intensely jealous I was. At the time I thought only his penchant for weirdos kept me in his life, but looking back I think he saw something in me invisible to others, including me. He stuck with me when I hit bottom, and was the only person who knew I was attending therapy. I was incredibly ashamed that I was getting mental health treatment, but Jack never made me feel unworthy. He listened to me talk about what I'd said in therapy, and never seemed uncomfortable or anything less than completely supportive.

After I emerged from the shadow of depression, we were talking on the phone about a fun evening we'd had the night before, during which I was accompanied by a fabulously cute guy who lavished me with attention. Jack said, "I never thought therapy was worth very much until I saw how much it helped you. You looked like a new person last night, and I felt so happy in my heart." I had to bite my lip to keep from bursting into grateful tears that even after seeing me through the worst he was still able to celebrate the best. I wish now that I'd just cried. I was too young to realize that he was worth it.

As the years passed Jack and I had periods during which we lost touch, only to reconnect later with no awkwardness. It was during one of these periods that Jack died, a legacy of the promiscuous days of his youth. It's cruelly ironic to think that, of the two of us, the one who actually enjoyed those wild sexual adventures was the one who paid the highest price, while I somehow escaped physically unscathed.

When I heard the news my world narrowed to a pinpoint, and all I could think was of a birthday gift he had given me years before. He barely had any money, and although I had insisted he not buy me anything, he presented me with a glass paperweight, inside which was sealed a red rose. It was, he conceded, perhaps the tackiest thing one could imagine, but he thought that on my birthday I should have a gift, dammit. Ten years before I would have turned up my nose, but I thought, then and now, that it was one of the best presents I have ever gotten.

How likely is that?

Memoir Monday: How I Spent Wolf Block's Last Summer

The day after WolfBlock announced its dissolution, I was stopped at the corner of 17th and Market by a young man who was soliciting donations for underprivileged children somewhere in the world. I've gotten used to this kind of thing; I evidently appear extremely caring to these kind of people and since I never have the heart to cut off their spiel with a time-saving, "No, thank you", they've got my number. That day, however, I was feeling a bit light-headed over the prospect of impending joblessness in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, so when the young man approached me I was less kind than usual.

"Do you have a minute for children in poverty?" he opened. People soliciting for charitable donations always start off with this line or something like it. Any answer other than, "Why, yes I do!" is an admission that the suffering of humanity's future is less important than getting to your Diet Cherry Coke thirty seconds sooner.

At the time I was not hankering for a Diet Cherry Coke, so I stopped. "Well, I'll tell you," I said, trying not to seem confrontational. "I have the minute, but if you'll turn around and look at that newsstand behind you, you'll see why I don't have the money." He turned and there, emblazoned across the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, were the words, "WolfBlock Law Firm Will Dissolve."

He turned back to me. "Is that where you work?"

"For now."

"Dude," he said reflectively. "Maybe I should be collecting for you instead."

***

WolfBlock had been a decent employer, don't get me wrong, but it was not exactly the place I longed to work. I joined the venerable law firm in 2008, almost a year to the day before the announcement of the dissolution, mainly out of a need for a paycheck and health insurance paid for by someone else. The job I applied for, and was eventually given, was "conflicts specialist", although at the time I was desperate enough to have accepted "experimental drug test subject."

A word here about conflict specialists, folks who work at nearly every law office who have a devil of a time explaining to non-legal-folk just what it is they do. Let's say John Q. Lawyer decides to represent Person A in a personal injury case against Person B, but it turns out that his colleague Jane Q. Lawyer in the next office already represents Person B in an unrelated matter. That's known as a conflict of interest, and if you are an attorney that's very, very bad. As in getting-sued, losing-your-license-to-practice bad. Conflict specialists, therefore, spend their time examining every new case a firm brings in to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest with existing cases. I was always good at it, and it sounds complicated and demanding, but in truth the job requires only a modicum of judgment, vision and the ability to type.

I'd worked in conflicts years previously before leaving to pursue a career in communications. Over the next eight years I learned that communications jobs are highly competitive, low-paying, and rarely yield much success. So I switched to stand-up comedy, which was much the same in that you competeed even more fiercely for less pay and at a lower success rate, only in stand-up your failure is even more public. I was instantly hooked. I needed something to pay the bills, however, and when I heard WolfBlock was looking for a conflicts specialist, I jumped. The pay was decent and the hours would permit me to work during the day and continue to perform at night. Since the position was with a firm that had soldiered along for more than a century, I couldn't have asked for a more stable job.

Twelve months later, however, I was in a large conference room with the rest of WolfBlock's Philadelphia staff, listening to soon-to-be-former Chairman Mark Alderman say how sorry he was to announce that, after 106 years of operation, the firm would close its doors at the end of May. There was shock, disbelief, anger, and more than a few tears, but to be honest I felt only a vague sense of relief. The last two times I had been unemployed were by my own choice, so I couldn't collect unemployment insurance. This would be a genuine layoff, and faced with the prospect of receiving a regular check for not working...well, it would be the softest landing I'd ever had. Besides, when you've told jokes to a drunken crowd at 1 am on a Monday morning, the prospect of unemployment loses some of its bite.

The reactions of the staff varied. Mona, whose cubicle abutted mine, expressed sympathy for Alderman, who was taking the blame (unjustly, in her opinion) for the firm's collapse. Given that three days after the announcement Alderman was comfortably ensconced at a new firm whereas Mona was losing her health insurance at age 63, I thought she should have saved that pity for herself. Katie, a legal secretary on the same floor, was less forgiving; in fact, she expressed publicly her wish for Alderman's children to die. I couldn't figure out how the man's children were to blame, but that fine distinction escaped Katie, who put her disgruntlement into action by detaching the ceiling-mounted fluorescent lights from their sockets, leaving the elevator lobby in shadow. No one was quite sure how she managed to reach the bulbs in their recessed sockets, and I thought that feat was worthy of inclusion on a resume. Not a transferable skill, true, but it demonstrated ingenuity and initiative.

The attorneys were generally tight-lipped, and most of them had cleared out to other firms within two weeks, leaving them little time for editorial comment. A few were more verbose, and felt free enough to express their opinions via firm-wide email. One of those emails opined that the firm's leadership was "grossly incompetent" and had engaged in "financial insanity." Another blamed the dissolution on an "abysmal failure of leadership" and "a few greedy lawyers unwilling to cut back on high compensation." A third, in an ecstasy of disgruntlement, declared that she was relieved that the attorneys were now free to "find new places with better leadership and management that makes better efforts to harness the talents of their lawyers, with compensation that better resembles a meritocracy than the Ponzi scheme that ultimately developed at Wolf Block." Needless to say, someone promptly forwarded those emails outside the office, and when questioned by the press the authors were forced to "clarify" their statements. "Well, when I said 'grossly incompetent' I meant that in the most complimentary sense..."

Immediately after the announcement of dissolution, attorneys and staff predictably began looting the firm. The partners had wisely taken down all of the artwork even before voting to dissolve, but they left plenty of swag. Pens, pencils, paper, tape, packets of coffee and sweetener from the kitchenettes...all of these thefts were to be expected. I was baffled, however, when within two days every single plastic coffee stirrer had vanished like smoke. There wasn't one stirrer to be had anywhere in the firm. Was someone using these at home in lieu of spoons? Or did they have street value like heroin?

***

The firm's official last day was June 1, but a few of the staff, me included, were asked to stay on through the summer to begin the monumental task of clearing out literally tens of thousands of boxes of files that had accumulated over WolfBlock's one-hundred-year lifetime. At first I was reluctant to commit my summer to a business that was breathing its last, but the remuneration offered plus the ability to stay out of the job market for three months was too tempting and I signed on. Floor by empty floor we moved, emptying desk drawers and file cabinets, checking shelves and offices for anything that seemed client-related and worth saving. Lots of it was neither, and I learned anew the immutable truth that the more space people are given, the more useless stuff they will put there. We found boxes of unsent invitations to events years past, stacks of catalogs for continuing education courses that were never taught, and untold cartons of extra copies of pleadings, depositions and other documents for clients dead before Carter was president. Most of it was shredded or went into the trash, but whatever was valuable was bar-coded, boxed and stacked in offices now bereft of attorneys, awaiting transport to more fortunate firms. We also came upon cartons of miscellaneous items like mugs, hats, shirts, pens and other paraphernalia – even a kite, if you can believe it – all pathetically emblazoned with the WolfBlock logo. While working, my coworkers and I entertained ourselves by envisioning ourselves at the helm of a new company that would rise from the ashes of WolfBlock, one that would specialize in the practice of closing down dying organizations. We even made up mottoes like, "Winding down your future", "When your dream ends, we're there", and my personal favorite, "You fail, we bail."

More surprising than the case materials were the personal items that had been left behind. Coats, gloves, shoes, makeup, radios, and CDs...all of there were among the non-work-related items we came upon in desks and atop file cabinets. They seemed somehow sad, as if they'd done their best to serve their erstwhile owners but had been carelessly discarded because of anger at the firm. They seemed to gaze reproachfully at me from the trash bins into which we'd tossed them, and I soon made a habit of not looking at anything once I'd thrown it away. The worst were the family pictures, abandoned for reasons I couldn't fathom. Surely if Mark Alderman's children were not to blame for the firm's dissolution, Mark Alderman's secretary's children were even less culpable, yet their images found their way nonetheless to the bottom of a large, wheeled plastic dumpster. When discarding an attorney's mousepad, personalized with a picture of his children, I imagined little Bobby or Suzie asking, "Dad, what ever happened to that mouse-pad we saved for a month to make for you?" Glad I didn't have to answer for him.

In between trash runs, I sometimes aimlessly wandered the corridors, looking into offices and conference rooms that in better times had housed movers and shakers who made deals involving millions of dollars. How many dreams and ambitions had been born, or slain, in these now-forgotten places? How many clients had been rescued from financial ruin, how many divorces negotiated, properties bought and sold? Corner offices, once so coveted, were now home only to boxes of old records. How many associates had broken their backs to make partner and get into those offices? How many had broken their backs and failed? I was reminded of Shelley's Ozymandias. Like the works of that great king, nothing of WolfBlock beside remained, except some empty rooms and a few dazed employees who wandered amidst the colossal wreck.

***

At the end of that summer nearly one hundred thousand boxes remained, awaiting either rescue by their owners or their last journey to the paper shredder. I remained as well, along with those unfortunate enough not to find other work. I didn't regret the summer; truth be told, with the attorneys gone that was actually quite an enjoyable job. Of course it couldn't last forever, but as I learned over those three months, nothing ever does. That's easy to forget even though we're reminded every day, by news reports of failed companies and bankruptcies and other corporation misfortunes. Working as a stand-up comic isn't exactly stable employment, but whenever someone points this out to me I think of my WolfBlock kite, rescued from the wreckage of the firm, and ask myself, "Is anything?"

Memoir Monday: All from Five Words

The Indigo Girls once asserted that the hardest lessons to learn were the least complicated. I'd say the same is true of questions. The most difficult question I ever had to answer was posed by a stranger and was composed of exactly five words.

The stranger was a psychologist, the very person to whom my doctor had sent me. She was exactly what you'd expect a psychologist to be: middle-aged, serious-looking, and possessed of intense intelligence and unnerving patience. After the formalities of meeting had been exchanged, she looked at me and asked simply, "So what brings you here?"

I am not a person used to sharing intimate feelings or experiences and I was far more closed then, so we sat in that office for a long moment while I struggled to reply. Two minutes is not a long time unless someone's waiting for you to share the most painful thing you have to share, in which case it's a geological age. I've made some hard choices in my life, but answering that woman's question was the single most difficult thing I ever had to do. But I did it.

After hearing me out, she very calmly explained that in her opinion I was dangerously depressed, and she asked if I would consent to hospitalization. I tensed right up as my mind filled with images of every dirty, abusive asylum I'd ever seen in a movie, and she read that as my answer. She then asked if I would take medication. I had to think longer about that, but in the end I refused. I didn't know much about depression then, but I figured that dealing would be easier if my brain weren't clouded by drugs. I'm not sure medication would have clouded my mind – lots of people take it to good effect – but I wasn't in a trusting place then and I refused. She nodded and told me she would assign me a therapist who'd work with me, then looked at me levelly and asked me to solemnly promise that in the interim I would not attempt to hurt myself. I gave my word, meaning it. I was completely fucked up with depression, but I've always known how to work hard. So I treated depression as a problem to solve or a foe to fight.

And fight I did, although for this battle I had to keep my armor off. I met my therapist a few days later, who was most definitely NOT what you'd expect from a therapist. He was an older gentleman who looked like a little Santa Claus, complete with white beard and round belly. Every Wednesday morning Santa and I delved into my life. It was the first time I got to talk so much about myself, and after some initial reluctance I was surprised how good it felt. He didn't match my vision of a therapist, true, but he sure acted like one. Santa was always asking stuff like, "Can you talk about the guilt?", or "What do you think?" and all of those other questions therapists ask. He wasn't shy about pressing me when necessary though; I remember one exchange...

Santa: "So you were angry about what she said. Did you say that you felt angry?"
Me: "I would feel really guilty about saying that."
Santa: "So you didn't say anything?"
Me: "No, but now I feel guilty because she doesn't know I was angry about what she said."
Santa: "So you would feel guilty about saying something, but now that you didn't say anything, you still feel guilty." [cocks head] "Does that make sense to you."
Me: "No. It doesn't make any goddamn sense at all."

Or another:

Santa: "So how do you feel about him having a boyfriend and you being single?"
Me: "Jealous. Intensely jealous. I know that makes me a bad person..."
Santa: "Why?"
Me: "You're not supposed to be jealous of your best friend."
Santa: "Why not?"
Me: "Because...you're just not!"
Santa: "Do you want him to lose his boyfriend?"
Me: "No."
Santa: "Do you want to take his boyfriend?"
Me: "No!"
Santa: "So you want him to have a boyfriend and for you to have one too?"
Me: "Yes."
Santa: "What's wrong with that?"
Me: "I guess nothing. So why should I feel guilty about it? That doesn't make any goddamn sense."

One nice side effect of depression is a willingness to admit when you're not making sense, which comes in handy when Santa Claus has you in a rhetorical corner.

Now in the movies, at some point during treatment there is a moment in which the patient understands the truth for himself, and then there is a dramatic explosion of tears and hugs and anguish, blah blah. Didn't work that way for me. After months of meetings, my therapist finally said, "Here's what I see." And he clearly detailed his observations, referring to my own comments when necessary to illuminate his insights. He wasn't mean or cold, but he didn't hold back, either, which is just what I needed. I gaped like an idiot through the whole thing, not from shock but from stunned agreement. After all the emotional ground we'd covered I was like a sponge, and this frank summation fell like water. The feeling of years of guilt and uncertainty slipping away was nearly physical, and it felt like breathing with two lungs instead of one. It was perhaps the sweetest sensation I can recall, and I've eaten chocolate-covered Nutter Butters.

After that, everything was different. I had gained the ability to analyze my emotions and determine exactly what I was feeling at a given time. Once I was able to realize I was feeling guilt, anger, resentment, or what have you, I could cope with that feeling and not just spiral down into an emotional hole in which I felt nothing but Bad®. In contrast to the bleak numbness that had been most of my twenty-seven years, I experienced an incredible surge of self-confidence. With my emotions no longer a dreaded enemy, for the first time in my life I felt that it was my life, and not a prison sentence. I took stock of myself: fat, largely friendless, lonely, and often bored, but no longer living in a toxic cloud of depression. As I came out of the haze, I decided that some changes were in order.

First on the list was my weight, which had ballooned to an unacceptable 190 pounds. (That's at 5'8.) Dieting isn't fun, but compared to battling depression it's a breeze. Within nine months I had lost forty pounds, gone down two waist sizes and looked like a million bucks. All the new clothes I had to buy were a burden on my then-modest income, but it was a burden I was delighted to bear. Part of that weight loss was due to Ultimate, which I had taken up that spring. Five years before I would never have considered taking up an unfamiliar sport with a bunch of strangers but those days of fear were gone.

Second on my list was my social life. I began volunteering around the community – art auctions, gay pride events, public radio, and whatever else required only enthusiasm and a willingness to make a fool of myself – and between those and Ultimate I made more friends than I ever thought possible. My calendar was always full, and I remember that my Saturday nights were regularly booked four or five weeks in advance. I also began dating, but this time I did it without either casual sex or making myself a punching bag. You see, along with self-confidence came the ability to perceive what was my problem, and what was the problem of some immature zero with control issues. And since my better spirits were accompanied by better shape, I resolved that the next guy who popped me one was going to get a surprise. A big, eye-punching surprise.

My brother, who witnessed this transformation, joked that I was now New Neil, which made me laugh without thinking too much about the remark. It must have been more apparent to others. About a year after I finished therapy, I was on a date with a sweet and attentive fellow, who after asking me about my various activities, said that he was worried he wasn't good enough for me. I had such a rich, full life, he said, while he was rather boring. I thought back to that night in the car, feeling bruised and doomed, and I thought, "Great Mother...if you only knew." Later, when I got home I took a good, long look at myself in a full-length mirror I'd purchased while I was dieting. Although New Neil looked much the same as the old one – minus some weight, of course – at the same time he looked reborn. And that seemed about right to me.

Five more words: Those five words fucking rocked.

Memoir Monday: My Unsuspected Line

Sometimes change takes years, and sometimes it happens in a moment, when you cross a line. This is a story about one of those moments and one of those lines. It's not a pleasant story, and it's taken me more than fifteen years to discuss it, but it has a happy ending, although it was a long road to get there.

Back in my early-to-mid-twenties I was both closeted and still refusing the deal with the depression that had haunted me since childhood. Each one was a burden, but the combination of both had sent me spiraling into the deepest depressive episode of my life. I'd lose hours of time, had little interest in any of my normal activities, and stumble through the day feeling dead inside. At first I used food to cope, which left me heavier but no happier. I then hit upon the novel idea of having sex with strangers. Maybe I figured that getting men to go to bed with me was a sign that I was desirable, or maybe I wasn't really thinking at all. In any case, I went to my mission with a will, hooking up with men both everyday and outrageous. That filled up my calendar – among other things – but those encounters just left me feeling empty.

The experiences were too many to relate here without crashing a server or two; I'd put the number of men I took to bed, very conservatively, at 40. One gentleman sticks out in my mind, a really strong-willed guy who did not take no for an answer. Given that I had very little ability to give no for an answer, we were as perfect for each other as Godzilla and Tokyo. The problem was not that he was an incredible jerk – I'd been with any number of those – but that part of sex for him involved hitting. This wasn't S&M; there were no leather chaps and vests and whips, and he didn't want to be called sir or master. This guy just liked dealing out abuse, and he didn't care if his partners enjoyed taking it.

The first time he popped me one I was surprised, but the blow, as hard as it was, didn't knock any sense into me. Instead, I tried gently dissuading him:

"Umm...no offense, but I'm not exactly into that kind of thing. Maybe we could sort of take it slow and a little less intense, if that's all right."

Translated from Screwed-Up to English, this reads:

"I don't like it when you hit me, but I won't do anything more than gently complain about it. So carry on."

As you've already guessed, he didn't stop dealing out the abuse and I didn't stop taking it. At the time I figured that things could have been worse. I mean, at least I wasn't alone, and he wasn't trying to injure me, right? I didn't feel afraid or angry, but just numb, like I was watching this happen to someone else. I do remember thinking that it was important he didn't hit me in the face; otherwise, I'd have to explain to my brother, with whom I shared an apartment, why I was coming home bruised. At the time that seemed a very rational consideration, and not the amazingly fucked-up, Lifetime-Original-Movie shit that it was.

Later, as I was climbing into my car, I caught sight of myself in the rear-view mirror and froze at a sudden realization: I'd be dead within a year. I knew this the same way that you know the sun rises in the east and that Monday follows Sunday. Looking at my reflection was like staring into my own grave, and it was the only time I ever felt doomed. I'd never been so freaked out, but that sensation was like the moon sailing free of the clouds. I hadn't felt so clear an emotion in years, and it snapped me back to reality long enough for me to crawl to my doctor.

Depressives are often good at presenting normally, but I was surprised – and relieved – to find that my doctor had known since meeting me that, emotionally, I was going nowhere and would be arriving soon. He had the name of a psychologist ready, as if he'd been awaiting this moment, and he urged me to contact her straightaway.

To this day I still wonder why that moment in the car was when my invisible and unsuspected line was crossed, and I still don't know the answer. That kind of mystery doesn't make for a good story, I admit, but at least this story has a happy ending, and in the next entry I'll go into the five words that started my journey towards it.

Memoir Monday: The Kingdom of Confidence

Despite a history of chronic uncertainly and endless self-questioning, I have often tended to rise to positions of leadership. Not because of overwhelming charisma or undimmed optimism, but because I always have a plan. I've twice served as a foreman on a jury, for no better reason than I was good at organizing discussion and keeping things on track. It's amazing how readily people will respond to someone who seems to know what he's doing, even if that someone is a barking idiot. (Washington DC, I am looking in your direction.) I am not a barking idiot, I hope, but in any case I'm often trusted to run whatever needs running.

I never felt quite comfortable with being in charge, though. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because I always felt as though I wasn't exercising authority in the right way. Should I be tough? Conciliatory? Distant? I didn't know, so I was always on the lookout for the answer.

Back in the 90s I was working at a mid-sized law firm, performing conflict checks, maintaining the case database and running various reports, etc. Not a bad job, if truth be told, and I was pretty good at it; so good, in fact, that I was heavily relied upon by one of the managing attorneys. (We'll call him Matt.) I spent a good portion of each workday in his office, explaining a report or taking as assignment. One day, when I came to his office I found Matt on the phone, and when I made to move off he waved me in and to a chair. The speaker was on so I could follow both sides of the conversation, and it seemed that one of Matt's subordinates was unhappy and taking it out on his boss. I held my tongue but wondered to myself why Matt was taking this kind of crap from an underling.

Matt, however, never broke a sweat. He nodded and um-hmmed while the guy on the phone carped and complained, but by the end of the conversation Matt hadn't lost his temper, raised his voice...or budged one inch. When that phone call ended, the guy on the other end of the line gave Matt exactly what he wanted, while I stood by amazed.

That was when I understood that real authority is not a crown, which sparkles and demands attention from everyone who sees it. It's a normal suit of clothing, which you might pick out with great care when you're dressing, but which you forget about approximately ten minutes after you don it. Everyone else knows you're dressed, of course, but later most would be hard-pressed to say what you'd worn that day. Bad leaders wear a crown because they need to remind others who's in charge; good leaders are confident everyone already knows it. The key word there is confidence. If you know you're in charge, that is often enough for others. Strange, but true.

So now when I'm called upon to run something – a work project, an Ultimate team – I try to think more about the plan and worry less about the rest of it. If people will follow the clueless bozos they send to Washington every two years they'll follow me, and I don't even have to win an election to know it.

Memoir Monday: The Worth of Worry

While I'm "married" to a fairly stable, reliable person, I've always been strangely attracted to those aren't. As I kid I was uncertain, rules-obsessed and constantly worried about what tomorrow might bring, and sure enough, my childhood best friend was brash, disobedient, and acted completely without regard for the future. When I was with him, I got to sample that attitude. I can't say his way was the best guide to living, but it sure felt good in small doses. Worry is hard.

Fast forward twenty-five years and I'm starting out in stand-up comedy. I was doing only so-so, getting some laughs from audiences but not really surprising anyone…including myself. Back then I attended open mics once or twice a week, so I was getting substantial stage time and seeing all sorts of audiences. One Monday morning around 1am saw me at a bar on South Street, pitching to a crowd that had just been treated to a drunken, shouted rendition of "Girl, Get an Abortion Now." (If you hadn't guessed, this was sort-of sung to the tune of "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon." The original was pretty stupid, so you can imagine how bad the filk was.) After that there was a bunch of heckling, and…well went as badly for me as you might expect, and I left the stage and the bar frustrated and depressed.

Anyway, two days later I was at Helium, where I was lucky enough to score a spot in the open mic. (Helium can be very tough in terms of getting stage time, which aspiring comedians should keep in mind.) While in the green room I looked at my set list and thought, "This sucks. I'm angry about what happened to me two days ago and I'm going to bitch about it." Worried Me warned that many of the people at Helium were also in the audience the night in question, but he was quickly shushed by Angry Me, who didn't give a damn. If someone in the audience got pissed that I called out what he did on stage, tough. So I threw away that set list (Worried Me howled in protest) and worked up a 2.2 minute set on the spot. You can see and hear the results here.

I was a hit. Although I was bitching I didn't come off as aggressive – I'm nearly incapable of that – and the audience was not threatened but entertained. And because I had stopped worrying I was able to speak not from my fears but from my passion, and audiences always know the difference. In that moment, I understood exactly why people drive to L.A. and live in their cars for the chance to make it big. My performance was hardly flawless; I said too many "umms" and stepped on the laughter more than once. However, I nearly flew off that stage, and I giggled like a Keebler elf all the way home. (Thanks to Dan for not back-handing me for that.)

That was one of the best moments of my life, and I can remember it far more vividly than any of the times I fretted, equivocated and wore myself to a frazzle over money or a job or whatever. It was a new feeling for me, but one I suspect my childhood friend was acquainted with. I can't say I live like that all the time, but then again I don't eat as much fruit as I should, either. So if I get one serving a day of each, I'm not worried.

Memoir Monday: The Art of the Personal

When I heard that the World Trade Center had been destroyed, I thought first not of the people killed but of the only time I'd ever been atop one of the towers. Maybe that's self-absorbed, but I've always thought it's easier to grasp the personal than the universal. Like art, death makes a connection more quickly and intimately when it's personal. When one person – your aunt, a friend, a friend's friend – dies, sympathy is pretty natural, but when thousands of people die that emotion is much less direct and pointed. And maybe it's arrogant to say so, but I think that's true for everyone.

Anyway, four years before the attacks, I had visited New York with my friend Jack on a crisp, clear, lovely September day, which was eerily like the day the towers fell 24 months later. We had decided to do all the touristy things, and one of those was going to the top of the WTC. We took an elevator up a long, long way, then switched to another elevator which took us the rest. Even inside that windowless moving box, I felt like Daedalus; there were some things human beings were just not intended to do, and one of them was ride a windowless, moving box hundreds of feet above the earth. Even the children on board were hushed.

We stopped first at the top floor, which had telescopes and windows and these little build-outs where you could look all the way down the ribbed side of the tower and get that vertigo that's your body saying "get the hell down from 1300 feet." Then we went up the escalator one more floor to the observation deck. Jack stepped right off the moving stairs into the open air, but it took a long time for me to gather the courage to follow him. Jack was always the bolder one, and when he laughed at my reluctance it didn't sting at all. Even if he found some of my ways funny, Jack never laughed at me.

Quiet. That's the first thing I noticed when I stepped out after him. There's not much peace in Manhattan, but at that height everything except the wind was quiet. There weren't even any birds to break the silence, and the other people on the deck respected that and kept their voices down. There were lots of people up there: tourists with kids and fanny packs, and New York types way too hip for either. I remember these two guys who looked as butch as Vin Diesel, but when they put their arms around each other Jack and I had to run away lest they hear us laughing and toss us over the side. Not that you could really toss anything over; the observation deck stopped well short of the roof edge. To commit suicide by jumping you'd have had to climb a fence and struggle through about fifteen feet of wires and other obstructions. Easier just to shoot yourself at home.

We were up there a good long time, looking over the harbor where the Statue of Liberty looked as small as the souvenir I'd once owned, from a long-ago New York trip. That kitschy little thing had been gold and the real deal was green, though. I always wondered what the US government thought when the French proposed building the thing: "Yeeeaaah…a giant robed lady holding a torch is exactly what New York harbor needs." Or maybe it was a surprise, and Grover Cleveland had to act delighted: "Wonderful! Amazing!" [To an aide: "Just put the damn thing somewhere I can't see it."] He probably burst a blood vessel when he found out they stuck it at the Gateway to America. Millions of immigrants got to wonder why the hell the French didn't just buy something off the registry. Jack laughed when I said that, except at first he thought Grover Cleveland was the muppet from Sesame Street, and not the 22nd (and 24th) President of the United States. He accepted the correction in good humor; Jack never thought it was embarrassing not to know something.

We tore ourselves away from the WTC and kicked around Manhattan the rest of the day, with Jack entertaining me by bursting unexpectedly into the theme song from "Hawaii 5-0." (He wasn't much of singer, but he nailed that one.) By the time we staggered back to Philadelphia we were exhausted but satisfied. I will never forget that day. Maybe that's why, when I heard the news of the destruction of the WTC, I thought first not of the people who died – that came a bit later – but of the time I'd spent there. I remember thinking, "But that means Jack and I will never get to go up there again." It took a long time to get my mind around the fact that about 2600 people would never get to go up there, or anywhere else, again. Too large, too distant.

Some years later, when I was told Jack had died, I had much the same experience, except this notion was just the right size to bullet directly into my brain. I understood straightaway with a dreadful clarity that I wouldn't go anywhere with Jack, ever again. So while I'm sorry that all those people died in September 2001, when I think of the World Trade Center what I remember most is visiting it with Jack. And if you'd been with him on that roof top on a bright September afternoon, you'd feel the same.

Welcome to Memoir Mondays!

So I've decided to write my memoirs and post them, one chapter at a time, every Monday. Right now you are probably asking yourself:

If you aren't famous, why are you writing a memoir? And why should anyone care?

I'm writing for two reasons. First, it's damned enjoyable. Those who claim to write have to actually write stuff, and this is my stuff. Second, I'm not a sharing sort of person, and that isn't always good for me. So I'm sharing.

As to why anyone should care...no reason, really. However, this isn't intended to be just a series of tales about my life. Each chapter will, I hope, focus on what my experiences have taught me about myself and the world, and I hope that others who have learned the same lessons – by whatever means – will relate and enjoy.

The tales you are about to read – assuming you choose to read them – will sometimes be funny or cheerful, and occasionally depressing and dark. Some of the stories are easy to share, and others I tell only with trepidation. At the end you might think better of me, or you might wonder how the hell I function without medication. In either case, you'll know me better. Oh, and these chapters aren't written in any specific order; we'll jump back and forth in my life as the mood strikes me, but I promise that they're written so's you won't get confused

Let's get to it.

***

Making Trouble

I imagine this will surprise those who know me, but I used to think I was shy. I wasn't really, not inside, but for a number of reasons I was strongly invested in not making a fuss or causing anyone any trouble. At that age I didn't believe that I might be worth some trouble, or that a little fuss can be good for the soul, but...well, there it was.

When I was an undergraduate, I had an American history class that I despised because the teacher took attendance at every class, in the form of a sign-in sheet he'd pass around the room. I told myself I was too shy to object, but I also had a defiant streak and I simply despised being treated like a child, which is how that sign-in sheet struck me. After all, I had paid my tuition; if I skipped class it was my loss and my business, right?

I was complaining about this to a coworker, who advised me simply, "Steal it."

Me: [goggles at her]

Coworker: "When the sign-up sheet comes around, just stick it in a notebook or something, and when class is over walk out with it."

Me: "What will I do if the professor goes up and down the aisles, asking who last had it? The person who handed it to me will point that out, and I'm caught."

Coworker: "If that happens, just say, 'I don't have it.'"

Me: "But...but..."

Coworker: "Look, if you stick to your story, there's nothing he can do. Just keep saying, 'I don't have it', and he'll give up. Don't worry about it."

I was fearful of taking what I considered a big risk, but I had this strong need to somehow assert my independence. The fear and need battled it out for a day or two, until the next class saw me secretly stuffing the sign-in sheet in my textbook. Despite my coworker's advice, of course I did worry about it. In fact, I was so consumed with worry I could barely even understand the lecture. When class was over I nearly sprinted out of that room, and as I did I heard the professor ask, "Who has the sign-in sheet?"

That gave me a start, and a part of me became convinced that: a) the professor would somehow suspect I was behind the disappearance of the sign-in sheet; and b) chase me down for a pat-down to find it. Turning sharply into the Kingdom of Crazy, I ducked into a corner of the busy corridor and pulled the sheet out of my backpack and stuffed it into my shoe, "reasoning" that a pat-down would not extend to my footwear. As I limped away at maximum speed, it suddenly struck me that the crafty schoolteacher, enraged by this theft, might indeed think to search my shoes. That's when I departed the Kingdom of Crazy and veered directly into the People's Republic of Paranoia. I ran into the restroom, shut myself in a stall, and stuffed the sign-in sheet into my underwear. See, I had this clever notion that the professor, fearing accusations of impropriety, would never dare to violate my Fruit-of-the-Looms. Congratulating myself on my canniness, I sat through my next two classes getting paper cuts in unmentionable areas. (Let me tell you that was the only time I ever regretted choosing briefs over boxers.)

Needless to say, the professor did not chase me round the Moons of Nibia, and round the Antares Maelstrom, and through perdition's flames to get back his sign-up sheet. Next class he announced he was going to keep a better eye out and then he went back to his life, which I should have done seconds after I pocketed the thing. I proudly displayed the stolen paper to my coworker, wisely leaving out the underwear-stuffing part. She never asked to hold the paper, which now makes me wonder if she guessed the part I left out.

It took me a long time to realize why I got so nutty about a stupid sign-in sheet, and I now know that it had nothing to do with shyness. I was afraid to have to face that professor and lie through my teeth, because that was crossing the line. I wasn't very good at line-crossing in those days, you see, because that causes a fuss, and that wasn't something I wanted to do. It took me a long time to learn that having needs and taking chances isn't really trouble; it's human. We have needs, and we're allowed to express them, even if we're afraid to do so. Especially if we're afraid.

So now I cross that line. It's a risk, but I've (finally) learned that keeping my head down all of the time is even more dangerous. I could have saved myself some worry – and some paper cuts – if I'd realized that twenty-two years ago. And telling that professor, "I stole that sign-in sheet you lost. Don't make me sign in for a class I already paid for, all right?" would have made a way better story.