Life is an emergency, a red alert.
Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!
Take it now or leave it to those who do
My older brother Duncan wrote those words. They are the opening lines of a poem called 911. Not Nine-Eleven as in September 11, 2001. Nine-One-One as in, “Call 911 you dumb fuck, your life is passing you by.” Indeed, my brother. Indeed.
The poem in its entirety is at the bottom of this post. It’s Good. I assure you that his words are far better than any of mine have ever been. You are probably best served by taking Prince Humperdink’s advice and avoiding all the bullshit I’m about to spew. In fact, please do.
Duncan died in October of 2007. I don’t want to do this but fuck it, I’m not sure I really have a choice at this point. As all those asshole acting teachers I had in LA used to say: Assume the position.
Have you noticed how I haven’t posted anything in a while? Yeah, that’s because, not only do I not want to write this, I don’t even want to think about it. And, by and large, for the last four and a half years, I haven’t. Not in any real way at least. Mostly because I feel like I should have so much to say, but I’m not sure I do. I mean, what the fuck is there to say? Because it’s been four and a half years and I still can’t come up with a goddamn thing.
What does it mean to “deal with” the death of a loved one? I am clueless. Completely without clue. But whatever it is, I’m pretty sure that I haven’t done it. It just wasn’t an option at the time. I packed it down pretty deep to get through those first few weeks; to be able to handle the details and be as fake-strong as I could for those around me. Sure, a lot of emotion still came through anyway, but it was only a fraction of what was there. Now, as I finally let myself grieve for the loss of the Dream Girl, everything else is coming up as well. Once you start, it can be tough to stop. Fucking Hell.
You want the story? Fine. Here’s the fucking story as best as I can tell it. Happy now? Yeah, that’s how big of an asshole I am- I turned it into an acting monologue. That’s as close as I ever came to talking about it. That way, if I cry or show any emotion at all, it’s not weakness, it’s just acting, right? Right. But there’s a lot more to it than just the Last Fucking Supper.
A day or two before he left, he asked me to take him to get some clothes. New jeans. I didn’t think twice about it at the time, bro needs some new dungarees, let’s make it happen. But since then? Yeah, it’s crossed my mind a few thousand times. Who the hell buys new clothes two days before they plan to shuffle off this mortal coil? Does that mean he wasn’t planning it at the time but something happened to cause it? Because if that’s the case, that shit is pretty much gonna have to be on me. So you can see how that’s not much fun to think about, yes?
One day during his visit I mentioned I’d had Enough of the shitbox that is LA and I was planning to move. He asked if he could live with me when that happened. God-damnit if I didn’t hesitate for a moment- the briefest of fucking moments- to reply that he might want to wait until I knew where I was going before committing to moving there. He said he didn’t care, but I think he felt that hesitation. Did he get the idea I didn’t want him to live with me? That certainly wasn’t my intent but I wonder how it came across. Was that the Last Straw? That’s a question I’ll know the answer to Never, no matter how much I think about it. What I do know is that four and a half years of thinking about it doesn’t get you any closer to Never than you were when you started. Because I’ve tried that.
I suppose there were two ways for me to go with this whole shit sandwich of an event. First, I could feel incredibly special and lucky that he chose to spend his last week with me and take solace in that fact, as heartbreaking as the situation was. Or two, I could spend four and a half years going over every last detail from that week trying to pinpoint what it is that I said or did (or didn’t say or didn’t do) that caused him to do what he did. Unless you’re new here, I’m guessing you have a pretty good idea which way I went with that one, eh? Yeah, express elevator to hell, going Down.
But it’s bigger than that last week we spent together. A lot bigger. Here’s the thing: Everything always works out for me. Sure, I work hard and all that, but life has been very good to me in countless ways. For Duncan, not so much. Dude could not catch a break. I’m not going to go into the entire history because frankly, it’s none of your damn business, but I will say that he struggled with mental illness for fifteen years before he pulled the plug. I’m not very comfortable writing that because it wasn’t something he liked people knowing. But it’s true. He was a brave mother fucker and I am honored and humbled to be his Brother. I just wish I’d been better at it.
As far as I can tell, the only thing he ever really wanted, was to be a regular guy with a regular life. A decent job befitting someone as unbelievably smart as he was. Not that he wanted to be a nuclear physicist or some shit like that, just a decent job that paid a living wage and not some $7 an hour gig busting his ass and breaking his back. A nice little house. Maybe a dog. And a girl to share that life with. Pretty much everything that I’ve been running from my whole life for fear of being Ordinary. That’s all he wanted- everything that I didn’t because it was too easy for me. Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of that, it’s very possible. But that’s how I see it and that’s how I feel it.
So there’s a lot of guilt there. And if my amateur psycho analysis is worth anything, (doubtful) that all might play into my difficulties with being happy. I have felt for a very long time, that I simply didn’t deserve to feel good about my life. If I enjoyed all the wonderful things I had- the great career as an artist, the luck of getting a television show, the cute little house, the love of the Dream Girl- well that wouldn’t be fair to him, right? So I chose to have all those things, but to not enjoy them. What an Asshole. Duncan probably wanted me to succeed and be happy more than I did. Imagine how fucked it must have been for him to see me with Everything and not even enjoying it. Like I said, what an Asshole.
So here I am, typing away at 5:30ish on a Tuesday morning. Perhaps not as desperately as I was a week or two ago, but typing nonetheless. I have to. OK, I suppose I don’t have to. If I’m comfortable with my life staying exactly the way it is, then by all means, I could just call it a day and catch some Zs. Sounds easy enough. Fuck, it is easy enough. I should know, that’s what I’ve been doing as far back as I can remember. Coasting. Lazy douche.
But that way of life just isn’t gonna make the nut anymore. Or as my freshman math teacher told us repeatedly- ‘Sorry’ don’t feed the bulldog. Or something. The point is, in order to be sure I stay on the right path here, I’m committed to a few things:
Number one- staying in therapy for at least three months, no matter what. And just for the record, no I do not expect to undo a lifetime of shit in three months. Sure, I am going twice a week so that’s more like six months, but still. I fully expect to be in it longer than that, but that’s the minimum I’ve set for myself no matter how much I hate it. And I hate it an awful lot. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s fucking expensive. And it’s not very environmentally friendly, what with the ridonculous amounts of Kleenex I go through. But, it is also kind of nice to go into a room with a stranger and just be honest for an hour. Well, it’s nice when it’s over anyway. On the drive there, you’re tense, anxious, unhappy. On the way home, you’re a bit lighter, a bit more hopeful, a bit More. It’s the exact opposite of going to Vegas.
Number two- drugs. The legal kind anyway. I’m committed to staying on anti depressants for at least six months. I’ve avoided admitting that I might not be able to handle the World all by myself for a very long time. I’m resourceful, I’m persistent, I’m clever, I can do it by myself. Of course, that begs the question, right? Ok, point taken. Six months, minimum. We’ll see how that goes. It can’t really get any worse, right?
My third and final commitment (in this context anyway) is to keep writing. Like the therapy sessions, it seems helpful if for no other reason than it’s a time when I can simply be honest. And I’ve been writing. A lot. I haven’t posted all of it. Not even close. And I don’t intend to. Some of it is not appropriate. Some of it is not relevant. And some of it is just none of your damn business. This one may fall into a couple of those categories, but I don’t know what else to do with it.
And so it goes. Sure, I’m still a mess with a lot of shit to “deal with”, whatever that means, but I am moving forward. Slowly? Indeed. But forward nonetheless. People tell me to “get over it, forget the girl and just focus on yourself.” Dude. I tried that for years, decades even- it doesn’t make me happy.
And now I walk a fine line between knowing that the odds of that relationship working out are very slim, and the need to take care of myself. Those commitments I listed are the ways in which I’m taking care of myself. As to the long odds on the other? Even at a million to one, it seems a chance worth holding onto. I mean, a million to one, that by definition is not impossible, right? So I got that going for me. Besides, who doesn’t love an underdog?
So I’ll keep on keepin’ on. Working on myself and holding on to some Hope for a better future. And trying to always remember that life is indeed an emergency. A goddamned beautiful, fucked up, amazing, twisted, savage, unfair, delightful, Cruel and Kind Emergency that is only as wonderful or as horrible as you make it for as long as each of us is lucky enough to get.
Fire in the fucking hole, man.
911
Life is an emergency, a red alert.
Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!
Take it now or leave it to those who do
To wrench, rip in tatters or wholes
The hour from the day,
the minute from the hour,
the second from the minute.
I see a thousand green lights
Go! Strike out!
Fly from the repression nest
Of tomorrow, the next day –
Procrastination a missed beat in the march of time.
See to it. Do it. Seek it.
It is whatever, as long as something,
A plan, a goal, a love, a fight, a purpose
That drives me on like exploded fuel
To the next moment of decision,
A dead gap, the dark depths, ocean trench
Of a self to be made again in the heart of darkness.
-Duncan Foster, July 2000
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