I often wished I could have had a respectable life. Scott, heir to a foundry, solid citizen. Last time I saw him, he was mowing his lawn, smoking a cigar, grumpy as heck. Something similar happened to Glen, sad and truculent. Cheery Joette died young. Eileen became an academic feminist, a functionary of government. Tootie played well with others, smiled a lot. Tommy was a naval officer. Steve followed in his father's footsteps, a bank officer. He was stuffy and unhelpful when I helped my mother present a check to pay off her mortgage. Probably got fired when his small town bank was acquired by a regional brand. Up or out, right, Steve?
Charlie became a librarian or something at an ashram, after a long career as a drunk. My pal Tom worked at the same part-time job 30 years with occasional forays in video, much of it access comedy, old jokes told twice. Jay faked reality and used Ronco Spray-On Hair. I didn't think he was particularly talented or clever, but he lived his entire life in show business and did a great job as art director on a show that Tom produced and I directed in 1982.
Okay, suppose I had been born in another time, like my father. He drove a halftrack in WWII, went to college and met my mother. Five sons used him up, kept him indentured to a job and a small town that he hated, beaten into accepting Food Stamps, devastating humiliation. He always wanted to work construction, move to Arizona, got to do neither, died where he was born. Ditto Uncle Fred, a bachelor shunned and shamed by pilfering a client's cash, did tax returns for helpless idiots, died in the house that he and Aunt Mary inherited, never left the nest. My brothers fared okay, I guess. Roger did exceptionally well, but he was hobbled by caring for my parents in their long horror of illness and incompetence. I escaped and never went back, except to visit and escape again as quickly as possible. There was nothing for me in Milwaukee or the crushingly airless German village that destroyed my parents.
Lemme think, who do I admire? Anne Coulter for sure, Ivy League law school, happy as a clam and perfectly confident no matter how awful the opposition. She laughs at them. Margaret Thatcher was wonderful in the same way, tough, happy, skewered blockheads gaily and took down the Soviet Union in partnership with Reagan. I did not want to be Ronald Reagan, nor did I admire Donald Trump. George W. Bush was a stone idiot, his father equally shallow and conventional. Jeb is the smart one? Hahahaha.
Oh, come on, surely there must be someone who you'd rather be?
Blank stare. Hammett and Chandler had horrible lives, Fitzgerald infinitely worse. Patton was a monster, although George C. Scott was splendid. It's certain that Jimmy Stewart was loved, but I'm not sure how good an actor he was. Acting was unnatural to me, directing automatic. That was the only definite talent I exhibited as a kid -- ringleader, organizer, leader. A client in Philadelphia asked: "How long have you been an idea man?" The question stunned me, made me think, and the only thing I could say in reply was: "All my life."
That's good news and awful news. In a recent email, my brother Roger opined that I was a "visionary," which was a respectable office on occasion (Edison, Voltaire, Grotius) but more often a trainwreck: Marx, Jesus, Mohammed, Kant, Owen, Wilson, FDR, Mao. I like to think that I advanced better ideas, but the price was awfully fucking steep, an entire lifetime and big misadventures to discern a simple idea or two. I never regarded myself as particularly talented, aside from directing and editing, storytelling, pitching ideas.
Denied a career in show business and exiled as an author, I should have done something else in life, but what? Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Machinist, artist, janitor. But the truth is inescapable, I was always a terrible employee. Personal best was a year at Disney, pushing paper and pushing the envelope, unwanted. I was under a lot of pressure. Tab had adapted Hunchback of Notre Dame, a one-sheet poster opposite my cubicle, saw it ten times a day. Tab got a nice WGA payday and I got $15 an hour to master Miramax bullshit. We started out as apartment neighbors in a cheap North Hollywood lanai. Cut it out, quit bitching. You don't want Tab's karma, nor Tarantino's or Spielberg's, that's for damn sure.
Okay, more truthiness, I was horrible at math. I remember the classrooms quite clearly, 14 years old, totally lost in geometry and pre-algebra. No science for you, dumbshit. The specific alternate universe I hoped for as a kid was radio communications. I couldn't memorize Morse Code to get a ham licence, a cognitive deficit, every second a new blank slate. No wonder I needed help as a filmmaker, couldn't shoot my own stuff, had to be prompted by a script girl on the set, made silly mistakes and missed common sense visual opportunities, emotionally overwhelmed by a performance, a stunt, a dolly move, a moment of life in high relief.
Sex mad, moment by moment seduction in high key. All I can do is shake my head, partly in plain disbelief. Gone now, of course. Too old and feeble to fuck. So I started putting porn on the page, outrageously graphic. No wonder I write so slowly. Stories unfold in slow motion, unplanned, extemporaneous. Plain language. A deep seated fear of repeating myself, using the same word or same idea twice, an impossible mission. Unread, utterly isolated.
Poop. Happy to be me, with one simple misery, grinding poverty, unable to feed myself. The draw of an alternate universe is money, applause, recognition as an idea man. Too late now. My ideas were unwelcome. Is that the fate of all visionaries? Terrible result.
Or is it? Consider Kavanaugh. Silver spoon, only child, first in his class, athlete, Yale, secret White House clearance, Harvard law professor, DC circuit court judge, never thought a radical idea in his life, squeaky clean follower of fascism, suddenly ruined by Deep State black ops, another turn of the torture screws every day and every sleepless night. He will die a broken man, everything wrongly taken from him, a straight-laced Boy Scout eaten by the lions.
Compared to Kavanaugh, being me sounds pretty good.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment