This Thing

I don’t know why this thing started with me. I don’t even know exactly how to describe it. So I guess that will make this story difficult to tell.

When I was a young man, I went to Mexico with a friend. We were brave then. Or maybe just stupid. Each of us arrived with nothing but a small duffle bag and a daypack with our snorkeling gear. We had no reservations for hotels, buses, ferries or anything. We had a guidebook, so we could find the proper page to show cab drivers and point to our desired destinations. This was important because we spoke no Spanish, except for cerveza and el banyo — which, conveniently, go together.

I remember feeling disoriented and anxious as soon as our plane landed in Cancun, and we entered a terminal where no one spoke English. It was the first time I ever saw soldiers with machine guns in an airport — something that’s all too common now.

We spent a few days — I don’t really remember how long — in that decadent vacation city. But we didn’t stay out on the strip. On those nights, and the succeeding ones, we found little Mexican mom and pop places, with tiled courtyards, and stone fountains surrounded by plants, and vines circling the interior columns. At night, they were lit only by lanterns and stars.

We always checked them out before we checked in, and they were always wonderful. They were part of our plan to see the real Mexico, not just the glitzy resorts because… fuck that.

After leaving Cancun, while barreling down a dusty side road somewhere on the Yucatan Peninsula in a rusted, old, green Nissan rental car, I saw, off in the distance, a small cluster of stick huts. My brain couldn’t even process this information properly, at first. But, there they were — structures consisting of a bunch of tree branches driven into the ground to form a circular outer wall, and then covered with palm fronds or some other vegetation.

And people lived in there.

I’d seen photographs in old issues of National Geographic, and read about people in remote regions of New Guinea or in some arid African nation that lived a primitive existence. But this was the first time I really thought about the meaning of the word “poor.”

That was a moment that stayed with me.

As we continued to Xel-Ha, and then on to the Mayan ruins on the coast at Tulum, I couldn’t let it go.

And I guess that’s where this thing started.

We moved a couple of times when I was a kid. Not like we were Army brats or anything. But we moved after second grade, and again in the middle of eighth grade. That was the big move — the one from Concord, Massachusetts to Stuart, Florida.

I instinctively knew my high school years would be important ones. I was awkward with girls, and had seen some of the emotional angst that had begun to show itself in middle school, and was sure to increase exponentially in high school. I wanted no part of it. College was waiting. It was clear my future was elsewhere. So, emotional bonds were out of the question. Why build them when you knew they would be broken?

I think it’s relevant to mention here that, in 1983, when I was a nineteen year old college dropout in Gainesville, I got a job in a hospital and continued in that realm for nine and a half years — initially in clerical and nursing support jobs, and, for the latter two thirds of that time in radiology. It paid my way through college when I finally resumed my studies.

I don’t recall thinking of it in these terms at the time, but I now realize it became necessary for me to steel myself to the miseries of human suffering. That’s not to say I wasn’t helpful and sympathetic to the patients and families with whom I interacted, but you must have a mental process — whether conscious or subconscious — to help you avoid letting too much of what you see sink in, to avoid bringing too much of it home. Especially, after three and a half years in a tertiary care level pediatric ward and pediatric intensive care unit. And even more so when your radiology department serves the medical examiner’s office.

I saw things that registered all across the very bottom end of my emotional spectrum, from incredibly sad to unbearably tragic. With a generous touch of gruesome thrown in as well.

I don’t mean to imply that I was scarred by my experiences. Many of them were very positive. But, when you combine the protective psychological mechanism that takes over in those circumstances with my long-standing desire to avoid any really meaningful human attachments, and add to that the fact that males in our culture have long been conditioned to disconnect from- or at least avoid expressing — anything resembling raw emotion, I think it’s safe to say I spent many years out of touch with my true feelings.

At some point, in the Nineties, I don’t know exactly when, I recall getting teary-eyed at a movie. I don’t know which one, but I’m positive it had a happy ending. It must have been some kind of a love story.

I remember thinking, “Seriously. I’m in a crowded theater, and the lights are about to come on, and I need a fucking tissue?”

It had never happened to me before. I was shocked. And puzzled. And embarrassed. And, of course, I concealed it from my wife. I decided it must be due to lack of sleep, or a random dip in my biorhythms. Or maybe it as just a really good movie.

Whatever the cause, I was sure it was a fluke that wasn’t likely to repeat itself.

Feelings. Where the hell did these come from?

Around this time, my wife and I traveled with another couple to New Orleans for New Year’s Eve. The male half of the couple was an old friend from high school. He’d since moved to Australia and married a Malaysian woman. This was her first time in the U.S. and I wanted her to be impressed. I’d been to New Orleans several times before that, and never thought a thing of the drive along the approaches to the heart of the city, other than that it was long and boring.

But, with someone from another country in the car — visiting for the first time — I became very conscious of our surroundings. As we drove along I-10, with my friend’s wife looking out the window, I noticed for the first time that we were passing mile after mile of wretched slums.

How could this sort of thing exist in our great country? Why had I not noticed this before?

I was shocked, and puzzled. And embarrassed. And, of course, I concealed it from everyone in the car.

We checked into our hotel, and I did my best to let it go. New Orleans is a great place to forget things, On New Year’s Eve, we dined at a delicious restaurant on Conti Street in the French Quarter. We followed that with a paddlewheel steamboat cruise on the Mississippi, complete with champagne and a live band. And then we watched the midnight fireworks from the upper deck. It should have been a magnificent occasion, but all I could think was that the four of us had spent more money in one night than the people in those slums made in a month.

It’s funny… I don’t recall seeing those slums on the return trip. Such is the power of our protective psychological mechanisms.

But it was clear that “this thing” had taken hold.

By then, I had earned an AA in Journalism and a Bachelor’s in Telecommunications from the University of Florida. And this version of me was becoming very different than the one I had imagined years before.

When you’re a kid, there are always things you can’t do until you “grow up.” I hate the word “mature,” and I rarely used it. This and that will happen when you grow up. You’ll be able to do such and such when you grow up. You’ll be ready for so and so when you’re more mature.

I began to think of it like crossing the finish line of a middle distance race. Once it happened, you would have arrived, and, that was it. You were done.

I always thought I would cross that finish line when I grew up. I always thought I would graduate from college, get married, and do all the things that grown up people do when I grew up. I would be me, and would remain that same me from then on when I grew up. That’s it. I would finally be the person I would always be.

I always thought I would grow up when I grew up.

But I didn’t. Until I saw those stick huts in the distance.

As I look back on it, I believe that was the first time I knew I wanted to be a writer, because most writers think in such a way that it’s impossible to be oblivious to everything around them. I could no longer be oblivious.

Being a writer is hard. I mean… it’s not like digging ditches. But I think most good writers are also good observers, and, when you really look, you see things you don’t want to see. There is so much sadness and suffering in the world, and it never quite seems to be balanced by equal amounts of love and happiness.

But you must be open to all of it if you want to have ideas that inspire you, ideas that are worth reading.

So now I’m stuck with these damn feelings. And I think I’ve finally decided that this “thing” is called living. I only wish I’d begun to do it sooner.