The Sword of Damocles

I never thought I’d be able to live with anyone. Too idiosyncratic, too particular about personal space, a fickle Gemini, I’m not one I would consider an easy person with whom to live. There are perks that go along with living with me, though: a great movie collection, fantastic cooking, and a rapier wit that will keep you comfortably tickled and in good spirits for as long as you wish. With this in mind, two years ago I decided to move in with F. and undertake a new adventure in living.

In the almost two years since that decision, F. and I have learned much more about each other and my life is vastly richer because of him. Whereas before, when I was in my 20s and couldn’t imagine ever living with anyone, now I can’t conceive a life without him in it. And Gio, the Shih-Tzu, too.

We’ve found a balance living together, one that includes dividing up household duties. It’s a utilitarian necessity to do so when living with someone, not just because one person shouldn’t have to everything, but it’s a partnership in which each party has to feel a sense of sharing responsibilities.

My two big contributions are grocery shopping and cooking. This includes preparing lunches for F. for the week and cooking dinner at night. I love doing this. It gives me joy and time to myself to be in the moment, to be present, and give back to the one I love. I also make sure Gio has the occasional treat. He rewards me with love and affection, but on his terms. Gio’s the most idiosyncratic of our motley crew, and if he doesn’t want to play or go outside to do his business, if he decides against what I want him to do, there’s no making him do it. He’s a venerable dog and I honor and admire that in the little jerk.

F.’s duties, which he nobly does with tenacity, are cleaning the house and doing the laundry – two acts I despise performing. He’s a manic vacummer, whizzing around the house in a blur, and in the end, the dust bunnies are gone, the bed gets made, my white t-shirts come back with only a slight shade of pink, and my pairs of socks occasionally return without their matching twins.

F. cleaned while I was out about town yesterday. When I came home the vacuum was still out, a peccadillo that I let go because of the work F. had done. Rather than bemoan the fact, I wrapped up the cord, ready to put it back in the basement cellar stairwell, but something else called me away, so the vacuum was left on its own in the hallway. I forgot about it until later that evening when the following occurred.

A phone call for F. He answered and it was his friend, Mary. They talked. I heard the basement door open, and then a terrible crash. Then silence. I ran to the door and opened it and there F. was, like the sword of Damocles, hanging above the stairs on the outcropping of planks over the steep steps that serves as a storage space, vacuum under his arm, hanging on for dear life by his elbows. Below, on the hard cellar floor lay his open cell phone with Mary continuing to talk, her voice echoing in the basement while F. swung like a pendulum. “Bla, bla, bla….” Didn’t she hear the fall? Didn’t she know he wasn’t there on the phone, but rather clinging to the crawlspace floor over the stairs? Apparently not.

It was one of those moments when you stand and stare, bewildered, not knowing what to do. It’s a moment when all reason gets thrown out with the washwater and baby and you’re simply left with a puzzling predicament. Had he really tried to talk and put the vacuum away at the same time? And how in the world did he end up like that? There are some things in life that deserve no answer.

“I can’t reach the stairs,” F. moaned.

In a situation like this, most people would rise to the occasion and save the victim who was slowly slipping from the precipice. But the first thing I thought was: Save the vacuum. Perhaps I should have thought of F., but vacuums cost money. F. can fall, but if the vacuum goes, then we’ll have to buy another one! Save it!

I grabbed it from under his armpit and placed it in the hallway. Then I had to figure out how to get him down. It was a precarious situation because he was too high above the stairs for me to place myself to stealthily maneuver him down. In the end, I was able to get under him and ease him down to the stairs, but after much thought.

Mary continued to talk away, unaware of the almost tragic series of events that could have taken place had F. fallen all the way. Broken ankle? Cracked head? It didn’t matter. The vacuum was saved. He picked up the phone and continued the conversation without missing a beat.

Living with someone isn’t always easy. There are arguments, tense moments, times of miscommunication and misunderstanding, but the other flashes of laughter, joy, and sharing a rich life together outweigh those times when things don’t seem to be going so well.

We’re a work in progress, and like that moment in the stairwell, you can either hang on or let go with the faith that someone will help you down to the steps of the stairs. I find it’s much easier just to go with the flow and see what happens next. And always make sure Gio has a treat.

Mother’s Day

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. F. and I hopped on the 1 train and headed downtown to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for the eleven o’clock service. Earlier, F. had asked me how I was doing, being that it was Mother’s Day, a day that if my mom were still alive I’d be in Pennsylvania celebrating her life with her. As her body is dead and she’s no longer physically here in this reality, I was in New York City. I told F. that I was fine, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure how to feel. I hadn’t thought about my mom – really thought about her – in a long time. Yes, she does pop into my head every day, but it’d been a while since I had sat down and meditated on my memories of her and the emotions connected to them.

There are times when something will remind me of her, like the other morning when a subway cellist played “Ave Maria” on the 96th Street platform. My mom had visited me in the city one time and we were underground, making our way to a subway transfer. I heard the train coming, but a woman was singing “Ave Maria” and my mom wanted to stop and listen. She always had the gift of taking the time to appreciate the moment, so we stood there and listened to the entire song. The woman’s voice was angelic, transcendent. I said, “Her voice is gorgeous. What’s she doing singing down here?” My mom turned and replied, “She’s singing for us.”

Then there are those memories of the last few days with my mom as she lay dying. Some memories are ugly, like the one of sitting hours by her bedside, listening to each gurgling breath, wondering when it was going to end. And others are beautiful, like those brief moments when she woke, fully aware, her eyes sparkling, her voice telling me I was a good son and that she loved me. I don’t know if I’ll be ever be able to fully exorcise some things I’d like to forget. There’s ugliness and beauty in death, and in the end, I prefer to recollect the beauty.

F. and I entered the cathedral and as we walked towards the altar we passed between two long tables filled with lit candles resting in pyramidal black metal holders. I knew what I had to do and F. echoed this when he said, “You need to light a candle for your mom.” I paid for a candle, set it in its holder, and then lit it. Whether it was in my imagination or not, it doesn’t matter, because I felt my mom’s arms around me. I thanked her for everything in my life and told her I missed her. I was feeling sad, but not lugubrious. It was more like a dull feeling of sorrow. I cried as a wave of sadness rose up from my heart and lodged in my throat. I breathed deeply and, on the exhalation, felt a release. It was good to cry. I needed it. I just didn’t know it.

I think as humans we often hold inside of ourselves deeply felt emotions of love, sadness, anger, happiness, bitterness, joy with a sense of longsuffering. Longsuffering doesn’t mean to suffer for a long time; it means “patient endurance,” something needed when considering the construction of St. John the Divine, where I stood last week on Mother's Day. Begun in 1892, the great cathedral is as yet unfinished. What started out as a Byzantine-Romanesque cathedral was changed to a Gothic design, with two world wars interrupting its construction along the way. The unofficial nickname is “St. John the Unfinished”. The church is a work in progress and, like the undertaking to create the cathedral, to work on it year after year, I continually wrestle with releasing the emotions about my mother’s death that are with me daily; they are a part of who I am and my life experience. I’m a cathedral under construction, living each day to love, learn, laugh, grow, and sometimes cry.

An Interview With Gio

What follows is an interview with the inimitable Gio, a Shih Tzu dog, in which he explains his own personal puppy theology.

TS: Gio, is that your full name?

G: No, it’s short for Giorgio, which is Gio on both ends with a “rrrruff!” in the middle.

TS: Where are you from?

G: A puppy farm in Pennsylvania.

TS: What was that like, being separated from your family at such a young and tender age?

G: I don’t really remember too much because I’m a dog, and we don’t really live in the past or the future. There’s only the bow-wow-now.

TS: In our past conversations you’ve told me that most dogs believe in a divine, supreme canine, the creator of all doggy life. Can you elucidate?

G: Yes, well, most dogs believe in the Great Dane, the source of our life and being, who is part of a trinity, including the Holy Woof and Lassie. I don’t where it all comes from, but I think it comes from our need to find meaning and purpose in our lives.

TS: Tell me more about Lassie.

G: He’s a prophet, the one who came to Earth, sent by the Great Dane, to live and show us all how to best walk on all fours.

TS: But some dogs take Lassie as the end all be all towards the path of salvation, right?

G: Yes, but I think it can get out of paw sometimes. Lassie was a being of love, but a lot of his more staunch followers would shake their paws at dogs like me in anger and violence. Their belief is inexorable.

TS: Do you believe in the Great Dane and the trinity?

G: I’m not sure. I have more questions than answers.

TS: Would you consider yourself an agnostic?

G: For canines the word is agdogstic. I don’t like labels, but if I had to give myself one I’d say, yes, I absolutely believe in the Great Dane with all kinds of doubts.

TS: Where does the Holy Woof fit into all this?

G: The Holy Woof is the universal bark that lives in all dogs. It expresses itself in different ways. My bark is different than a Chihuahua’s, but the woofs all come from the same source. It connects us.

TS: What about Lassie?

G: Well, I know he actually existed and lived his life in the service of others, especially to little Timmy, who was always getting into some kind of trouble, whether is was with a wild or misunderstood animal, getting lost, or falling down a well. Lassie was always there and Timmy was always given a little lecture on why he shouldn’t have done what he had done. Timmy’d be dead a hundred times over if it weren’t for Lassie, but there seems to be this canine cult that’s arisen since Lassie’s demise that one fateful day when he sacrificed himself for that busload full of school children, and I’m not so sure that’s a healthy means of belief.

TS: What do you mean?

G: Well, I can believe in Lassie, do my best to follow his example, love as much as I can and treat other dogs and humans with kindness and respect, but some dogs have barked at me most viciously when I questioned whether this is the only way to live a life of faith and belief in my connection to something beyond my own puppy self. I don’t think Lassie came here to become an idol of worship.

TS: Is there a canine belief in heaven?

G: It’s called the Great Puppy Hunting Ground where dogs get to chase cats and squirrels and actually catch them for once. There are also endless kibbles that rain down from the sky, fields of fire hydrants, and mailmen with sausages for legs.

TS: What about hell?

G: It’s called going to the vet.

TS: Do you believe in these concepts of an afterlife?

G: I don’t know and I think that’s the key point. I don’t not believe in them, but to me they’re not really important. All I have is now. If the Great Dane created puppies so that he could live through his creation, why would he send me to the vet if I doubted him or didn’t believe? Life for me is about questioning. The answers are less important than the discourse that can be engendered through the sometime almost insurmountable questions.

TS: Can you summarize your personal doggy philosophy for our readers?

G: Bark and let bark. Don’t judge. Take naps. Play. Ask questions and maybe one day you’ll find out that you’ve been living the answers all along the way.

TS: Anything else you’d like to say?

G: A milkbone in the paw is worth two in the box.

TS: Thank you, Gio.

G: Woof!

I Am A Non-Smoker

I haven’t had a cigarette for two days since I got a cold, not the swine flu (oink), just a tad bit of something that’s got my nose stopped up with no place to go. I figure it’s a good time to quit because when I’m ill I’ve no desire to light up. I’ve tried curtailing the habit, but for the past week I thought it better to completely secede from the federal states of nicotine. I’ve quit many times before for varying durations, from days to a week to months to a year, but I always returned. I’d quit before my mom died, but when she did shuffle off the first thing I did when I returned to the city was buy a pack and light up. It’s been on and off since then. I never smoked a pack a day, sometimes one cigarette, sometimes two, usually never over five.

I am a non-smoker. I’ll write that mantra out nine more times.

I’m usually not one to point fingers, but I have to blame Bogey and Bacall for my smoking. I was six years old. It was a Saturday afternoon. Grandmom lived in a long blue trailer in our backyard. I remember the day it was hauled back there and placed between the oak trees, like it was always meant to be there. We sat in her living room, ate ice cream and pretzels, and watched “The Big Sleep”. Black and white sex oozed on the 20-inch cabinet TV. B&B never had sex, but what they couldn’t do on screen they could do with a cigarette. Watch Bogey light up her smoke. Study how Bacall takes a long drag, stares deeply into his eyes and seductively exhales, all the while engaging in noir foreplay:

Bacall: You've forgotten one thing - me.
Bogey: What's wrong with you?
Bacall: Nothing you can't fix.
(Fade to Black)

As a child, I knew I was destined to be a smoker. I too could be a man like Bogey – a man’s man. I too could smoke.

I am a non-smoker.

The first thing I did when I arrived at college was buy a pack of Camels. Grandpop smoked them. I looked at myself in the mirror in my dorm room and Bogey stared back, smoke curling up from flaring nostrils. Here's looking at you, you sexy smoking kid. I was hooked. I coughed up half a lung and kept practicing.

I am a non-smoker.

One of the times I quit was New Year's Eve, 2001. I wanted to clear my lungs, clean my breath; to smell the bouquets at the corner bodega; to taste the lemon of chicken francaise or savor the intimations of citrus and stone fruits on the palette from a Pinot Gris wine; to be able to sit through three hours of “The Two Towers” and not get the jonesing jitters.

I stood on my friend’s roof and on the stroke of twelve took one last inhalation and threw the cigarette away. It hit some drag queen below who screamed, “I’m gonna come up there and give you such a pinch!”

When I woke the next morning and had the usual feeling of lethargy I was happy that it would be gone after a few days. I’d done my research and learned that nicotine leaves the body in one to two days. If I could get past that, the physical addiction would be gone in another two weeks. It’s the psychological addiction that kills all attempts at cessation.

I am a non-smoker.

What God forgot to divulge to the prophets is that not only does each of us have a guardian angel, we also have our own personal gremlin. Some may call them daemons; others may say they're elves or dark angels of mischief. I call it a gremlin.

My gremlin's name is Lucius. It helps to name them, bring them out into the open and acknowledge them. That’s what my personal coach told me. I never thought I could use a coach, but she was really good. At the time, she got me motivated and had me draw out a plan for what I wanted to accomplish. It lasted two months because for some reason she stopped returning my daily calls. I found out later that she had an emotional meltdown, curtailed her coaching gig, and fled the city and disappeared inside an ashram. I still hope I didn’t have anything to do with it.

On the second day of quitting, as soon as I walked out the door, Lucius popped up his hideous head. A diminutive, scaly, pugnacious imp, he sat on my shoulder, blew smoke in my face, and whispered sour nothings into my ear.

"You’re walking to work?" he asked.

"Yes,” I replied. “Www.quitsmoking.com suggested exercise was good for quitting. Pump the heart and get that nicotine out as fast as possible."

"But you love smoking. You have no choice – it’s in your blood, your genes. Everyone on your father’s side smoked and nobody died of cancer."

"Yeah, only heart attacks."

"At least they went quick.”

"Shut up.”

"What about reincarnation? You get to come around again and again. Your soul is immortal. The body is dust. You’ve got eternity to live and smoke!"

I remembered my Sunday school and commanded, "Get thee behind me, Lucius."

“That only worked with Jesus, and you ain’t Christ.”

"Bugger off!"

"You sound more like the Apostle Paul."

I am a non-smoker.

I stopped and took a deep breath. In my “Nicorette Quit Smoking Guide” it suggested that whenever the desire to light up raised its pernicious head, when you had a hallucination, the sweats, or the overwhelming desire to grind and eat your own teeth, you were to stop, breathe deeply and let the feeling pass through you. It actually helped because Lucius grumbled and slinked away behind my head.

I am a non-smoker.

I popped a Nicorette. Chew, chew, park. Chew, chew, park. My Nicorette mantra. That’s what the instruction manual said. One chews for fifteen seconds, waits for the peppery taste to hit one's gums, and then parks the gum in one's cheek. Wait until the pepper taste is gone then repeat until the nicotine is depleted from the gum. It was awful: a tasteless mass of lightly flavored mint-pepper silly putty that made me feel like a cow with the obligatory cud.

I made it to the 47th Street and Broadway donut cart, waited in line, and thought that normally I’d be having my before-walking-into-work cigarette. I ordered my egg sandwich and watched as a woman walked up in a fake waist-cut fur coat, tight pants, and dirty old moonboots. She ordered her dollar coffee and donut special and took a drag from her smoke – one of those cheap generic Basic 100s.

"No chocolate?" she asked.

"Glazed, glazed!" barked the Greek. Then he winked, but his ample wife, frying up my egg, didn’t notice.

The woman sneered, exhaled, and somehow the two-inch long ash didn't fall. She was one of those distinctive people who can do that. It just hung there, the tobacco cherry glowing red every time she inhaled. The ash didn't even fall when she picked her nose with a long crimson pinky nail.

I am a non-smoker.

Work went fine for the first two hours. I was busy writing a grant proposal, keeping my mind off the habitual need for a mid-morning smoke.

Lucius knew my routine. "You know, you could quit when you're thirty, you don’t have to do it now."

I popped a Nicorette, chewed and parked. "I’ll be thirty in six months."

"So quit when you’re forty,” he said with a grin. “There’s plenty of time."

"Shut up."

Lucius leaned his elbows on my head. "Remember the movie, ‘The Thin Man’? Nick and Nora Charles drank like fish and smoked like two factories in Dickensian London. They were sexy, classy people."

"And I bet they smelled like a factory."

"You never smelled that bad."

"I'm not listening…hmm-hmm-hmm…"

Lucius stretched his hands above his head and curled himself around my neck. "Why put yourself through quitting? You’re causing more stress on yourself by trying to quit. And besides…you really do look sexy with a cigarette."

Did I really enjoy it, or had I been smoking for so long that I'd actually convinced myself that it tasted good, fooled myself into believing I liked it, even though I woke up wasted and dehydrated. Had I forgotten that there’s a reason they call the tobacco remnants “butts”?

Lucius piped up, "Drink more water."

"Shut up. Go talk with my future self."

"No."

"I command you."

I knew that my future self was a non-smoker and that he’d tell Lucius a thing or two.

I am a non-smoker.

Maybe smoking is a part of who I am. Did I say that? Lucius?

"Yeah, it’s me."

I am a non-smoker.

Now, seven years later, I’ve quit again. My sense of smell will return and I will taste things better. I’ve learned that I’m human and liable to make mistakes like a guilty, backsliding, penitent Christian. I’m going to do my best. Although I would love to be able to do it, I can’t have just one cigarette. I can’t have any. I am an addict. Like a junkie, an alcoholic, a chocolate fiend, it has to be all or nothing for me. I’ll take the nothing right now and continue to breathe deeply every time the urge comes. I think I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life.

"Yes, you will," Lucius says, barely above a whisper.

I am a non-smoker.