Category: Audio

Includes an audio version.

“They’re Wrong About Us”

Even before we started running around together, Shelly and I were two of the most visible people in our high school. Heck, it seemed like everybody in town knew us: we couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized. At the time it was a town of about twenty-five thousand people, and we had both been born there. Our dads were highschool teachers, so even when we were young, people knew our families. Both of us were deep into the performing arts and were used to being photographed by the local newspaper for publicity purposes several times a year, starting in junior high school. The fact that nobody would have imagined us as a couple prior to our now very public getting-together made us the subject of much gossip and speculation. As Tom pointed out, everyone figured we would last about three weeks. If “everyone” thinks a thing, there might be a basis for it.

Shelly took it as a challenge.

From the vantage of decades of hindsight, I think three to six weeks would have been appropriate. She would have graduated and headed to Europe for the summer, then to UCLA in the fall. I was preparing to attend the piano master class music camp that summer, with another year of high school after that. The fling would have served as a sweet coming-of-age memory for both of us. You are guessing correctly that it went a different way.

Neither of us minded the public attention our liaison received. We revelled in it. We were both accustomed to the rumor mill, she for being a “slut,” I for being “queer.” The cognitive dissonance that had people marveling over our odd pairing was hilarious to us, not least for the irony of it. From the outside, everyone assumed that Shelly, being a year-and-a-half older and “very experienced” was “robbing the cradle” and corrupting a previously innocent nerd who was painfully awkward with girls. Many were surprised because it was widely assumed I was “gay” — not entirely without reason, of course, since I am bi. She was well-known for her brash and assertive manner, and I was generally quiet, my goofy antics not withstanding. It certainly seemed I would be overmatched and swept away by her passionate intensity.

But as soon as we got to talking it became clear that the reality was quite different than what people thought. About the only part they got right was that I was indeed swept along by her intensity. I would push back, but in any clash of wills or perspectives, she usually won out. But while she had been the one to “make the first move” on me, she quickly hit the limit of how far she could go with it. In an earlier post I described how she was actually “terrified of men,” and she had kind of painted herself into a corner socially. She could never have lived up to her reputation. If she had gotten with an experienced man it would have become immediately apparent that she was sexually walled off. She would have been traumatized by the humiliation of it. She felt safe and comfortable with me, and I never pushed her past her boundaries. I am a sensitive guy with “great hands” and even greater patience. And I had done my homework. Her understanding of sexual matters was what she had learned in health class, wrapped in a thick layer of cultural myth and dirty jokes — cartoonish at best. On the other hand I had studied every bit of written material I could get my hands on, from legitimate to sketchy. I had read “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” “The Joy of Sex,” “The Sensuous Woman,” the “Kama Sutra,” and lots of “Penthouse Forum.” From Langenscheidt’s Medical Encyclopedia I had memorized all the diagrams of female anatomy, internal and external — to the point that I could have sketched them out and labeled them correctly from memory. I had even read Freud. She didn’t even really know what she had “down there,” and had never explored it beyond a quick scrub in the shower. Her very large breasts were an annoyance and an encumbrance to her, and not in any way a source of pleasure. As I described in a previous post, I could feel anxiety gather in any part of her body I touched, so I proceded with care. Because of the disparity, the power dynamic was reversed when we became physical: I was the one in control as I spent the next few weeks gradually initiating her into the experiences of intimacy, first clothed, then gradually, not.

This bifurcation between the public and private aspects of our relationship set a tone that persisted the whole time we remained together — a sense that “the world” just didn’t understand us. “They’re wrong about us.” It became a kind of trap. We both cared very much about how we were perceived, both as individuals and as a pair, but we each harbored dark secrets that wouldn’t see the light of day for years to come. In a sense there was a transactional nature to the relationship: we were both ashamed of our inadequacies and “weirdness,” and we hoped each would help the other overcome them. We came to be defiant in our defense of our partnership, and the more people looked askance at the way we began to cling to one another, the more we dug in.

Many years later my dad and I had a conversation about the whole relationship. He was comparing it to his with my mom. He said, “Sometimes when two people find they have complementary neuroses it can lead to a strong bond, deeper than codependence. Very unhealthy, because the mutual adaptation keeps both people stuck in their neuroses.” I had majored in chemistry at UCSB before dropping out, so I made an analogy. “Hemoglobin has an active site where oxygen temporarily attaches to an iron ion to be transported through the bloodstream from the lungs to the cells, where it is released for metabolism. Cyanide kills by attaching to the hemoglobin and never letting go.”

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Introducing Audio

Ever since I started telling personal stories on this blog I have wished you could hear them in my real voice. A better writer could convey more expression in prose than I am capable of, but I find when I read them out loud there is more lilt and roll, rise and fall, and emotional nuance. It’s more personal.

For the past couple of months I have been immersed in learning how to do voiceover work, building up a home studio and learning editing techniques in addition to getting coached on voice acting. My initial motivation came from the long-held dream of turning this into an audio blog, where you can read along with the sound of my voice if you wish, or just listen as you do something else.

So far I have uploaded audio for about a dozen posts, including the whole Boom-to-Bust thread. I have created a category called “Audio”, available from the menu on the upper right. The category can also be accessed directly through the link kirkwise.com/category/audio. I hope you enjoy it!

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Human

I suppose I am a human being. I mean, that must be the assumption, right? I have always felt like a freak. I was frequently called “weird” and “a freak” growing up. I admit I have always been puzzled by the way people around me behave. They all seem to be in on a secret to which I have never been privy. What to do and when to do it. I have always done my best to act in ways that that meet with approval—whenever I can, anyway. I guess the word people use now is “masking.” I’m glad we finally have a term for people like me: neurodivergent. It doesn’t sound so bad when you say it like that.

Physically I am average in every way. I look normal, I suppose. Somewhat attractive, I am told. I have traced my ancestry and I come from a long line of everyday people. My genetics are English, German, Scot and Irish, in that order. I am a plain old ordinary guy, but somehow I was gifted and cursed at the same time. I’m hyper-sensitive, queer, musically inclined, and with a very high IQ. Oh, and also an alcoholic (with forty years of sobriety). If you are meeting me for the first time and are interested, scroll back and read “From Boom to Bust,” a thread in which I recount my childhood, and you will get a sense of who I am.

I hit a point in my autobiographical storyline where I had to stop and rethink how I wanted to proceed. I have been thinking about it a lot over the last few months and have decided that the theme must be “a man’s search for meaning.” Mine has been a journey of spiritual growth, but I have to take a moment to define what I mean by that term.

I don’t believe in God or gods, or in any of the things that are generally encompassed by the term “spiritual.” But there is no denying the reality of what I call “the human spirit.” Humans are interesting beings: we evolved like all animals, yet we have reached a point where we can reflect on ourselves and assess. If other animals have this capacity it’s hard to know, since they don’t talk to us, at least not in words. They do communicate, and we form bonds with them. How much they are like us I just don’t know. But humans, we talk a lot. Every person has a spirit about them. I mean all the things beyond the merely physical: qualities of character, vibes and energy. What we value shows up in everything we do. Most importantly, I believe in the plasticity of the human spirit. We can, by choice, cultivate in ourselves any qualities we wish, given time and persistence. The Buddha recommended developing compassion, generosity, and wisdom, and any of us can do that if we choose to prioritize those things. What we often forget is how amazing that is!

So, I see humans as animals with a little something extra. We are organic life forms, but something about us can transcend mere nature if we try. Inside of each of us is an image of what we are striving to become. I call that our higher self. When I do 12-step work, that’s the “higher power” I’m working with: the yearning to be more than I was yesterday, and the inherent power to move one inch closer each day, trusting the process.

It has been a long journey, and I have learned a lot. My life story includes many stages including grasping to make some sense of my life when I was in the depths of CPSD and alcoholism with a dissociative identity disorder, recovery with the help of 12-step programs and therapy, a decade as a devout Methodist, then as a “new-age guy,” then Buddhism. Eventually I became a licensed massage therapist so I could go back to college. I completed a double-major undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics and finally felt that life made sense.

Until lately. Now I am living through the descent into darkness, the ripening of negative karma, of my once great nation, with which I happen to share a birthday, July 4. My disappointment in my species, of which I have only ever barely felt a part, is crushing. Humans are more than our animalistic urges, but only barely. People can rationalize any atrocity if sufficiently motivated, and I’m seeing a lot of dark motives playing out in our public life. I am disgusted.

But I also feel a sense of urgency bordering on despair. I have so much I want to say that I feel I could pound away at this keyboard for the rest of my life and barely scratch the surface. Today I wonder if my country will die before I do, and if these “messages in bottles” will be picked up and read by anybody, or if I am just yelling into the wind. Regardless, writing in this blog is a duty I owe to myself and my loved ones, so I will proceed.

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Shelly’s Dad

Before I continue with the story of our budding romance, I want to pause for a moment to introduce Shelly’s dad. I mentioned earlier that our parents all knew each other when we were born, since our dads both taught at the high school. By the time I was in high school my dad had long since moved away to the wine country along the Russian River, but Shelly’s dad was still there teaching physical geography and driver’s ed. I took his class when I was a sophomore. He was not a popular teacher. The most popular teachers at our high school had lots of personality, took an interest in their students’ lives and made their classes interesting and fun. Not so with Milan Staival.1 He was a tall, slender man with dark hair and Slavic features — a little intimidating just to look at. He was born in Yugoslavia and moved with his family to Pittsburg while still a young child. His father was a baker. Neither he nor his father could ever return to the old country without risking arrest and conscription into the Yugoslavian army, but they didn’t mind serving in ours. Milan met Shelly’s mother, Cleo, when they were both in college in New York. Cleo was Irish Catholic from Iowa, trained as a librarian, but now a dedicated homemaker. Milan stopped short of completing his doctoral dissertation in physical geography and got his teaching credential for high school instead. I’m not sure how they ended up in Northern California, but they brought with them old world values that stood out in the 1970s. They were very old-fashioned. They were in many ways a contrasting couple: she being a petite redhead who talked a mile a minute, he being tall, dark, and quiet. She was Catholic, he was Eastern Orthodox. There was no Orthodox community where we lived, so he agreed to allow Cleo to raise their kids in a strict Catholic manner. I think he preferred to be relieved of any religious obligations.

Milan’s teaching style was dry and to the point. It would have been beneath him to try to appeal to the kids by being fashionable, cool, and groovy like some of our teachers. He simply lectured, sticking to the facts. One thing that caught my fancy was that he was still skeptical about the newfangled theory of plate tectonics. “I can see that it has a lot going for it, but I’m still not quite convinced,” he said one day in class. I found that amusing because everybody knew plate tectonics was a thing. (I had had a subscription to National Geographic magazine since I was eight and knew all about it.) Most of the students seemed to dread his class, not only because he was strict and gruff, but also because they found the subject dry and boring. Not I. I loved the class and paid attention to every word. I think I may have gotten the best grade of any student who had taken the class, and I think he was charmed by my enthusiasm for the subject. My intuition told me that the gruff demeanor was actually a cover for a shy and gentle spirit.

When I say that he and Cleo were very old fashioned, I mean they raised their kids in a very strict and orderly household. They were dedicated parents and very committed to their traditional gendered roles. Milan could fix anything that needed fixing and Cleo would enlist her daughters’ support (she had four) for the organizing of stacks of coupons each week before grocery shopping. But Milan did one thing that I didn’t anticipate: he baked bread. It was only occasionally, but I have to say the basic white bread his father had taught him to make was the most delicious, chewy, and delectable I have ever experienced.

I think the fact that he was an intimidating teacher might have been one of the reasons Shelly had never had a boyfriend, but I knew he liked me, which is why I was willing to take the chance.

  1. Not his real name but same vibe. ↩︎
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We Get to Talking

That first weekend is still kind of a blur. Drinking, making out. How I got from one place to another, whose house we were at, how I got home: I have no idea. Even at the time I was in a haze. But over the next week we began talking more and more: on the phone, at school. I remember kissing in the hallway in front of everybody between classes. If anyone hadn’t heard the news by then they knew now. I think we both relished the thought that we were the talk of the school. We were an unlikely couple, and we were both well-known. It had everyone speculating. Our friends congratulated us.

The surprise for me was the nature of our private conversations. Shelly was brilliant and articulate. Whereas I didn’t even last one year in Catholic school (see the thread “From Boom to Bust”) she had thrived there. She was a great student and the nuns loved her. She loved being Catholic and was fascinated by all the theological and ritualistic aspects. She sang in the church choir and relished the music. As you may recall, by that point in my life I had become an atheist and felt completely alienated from my Catholic roots. She had taken an additional middle name at confirmation and now her initials were SASS. I kid you not. Shelly was athletic. She played field hockey and swam. She was adventurous and assertive, and when she played field hockey it was “banzai!!” as she rushed into the middle of the action. She worked after school, reading for a blind woman and assisting her with her personal and professional paperwork. She had been saving money all through high school and planned to backpack through Europe alone during the summer after graduation. She had her airline tickets, passport, and Eu-rail pass all ready to go two months early. In the fall she was entering UCLA. I learned all this very quickly.

In the process, I picked up on the fact that her energy and quick wit masked a great deal of anxiety. She worried about everything, all the time. She was actually quite insecure. Her way of dealing with fear was to just go balls-to-the-walls all the time. She told me she had trouble sleeping, for years. It’s possible that the only time she relaxed at all was when she was drinking. This explained a lot.

Our make-out sessions were passionate and intense, but even a week in we were fully clothed. It was just kissing and hugging. Whenever my hands would wander anywhere on her body I could feel the anxiety flow there. Touch is my “element.” When I touch anyone, I feel things inside the body. Like a sixth sense, I “see” what’s going on with the person. Many years later this natural gift made me a very successful massage therapist. At the time I didn’t reflect on it at all, I just knew what I knew. But I could tell something was up with her. We got to talking about it.

Turns out kissing and hugging is all she had ever done with a guy. The rumors about her being a “huge slut” were based on the fact that she had made out with a lot of guys at parties, but she told me she had never had a boyfriend and had never done anything sexual with anyone. In fact, she said, “I’m actually terrified of men.” The reputation was a cover, a magic spell to ward people off. I smiled, laughed, and said, “I get it.”

She then told me about her night terrors. I asked, “What is it you are afraid of?” She said, “I wake up in the middle of the night terrified that I am going to die unexpectedly.” I said I thought that was strange for a person so young, and she replied, “It started when I was eight.” That intrigued me, so I asked more questions. She said, “Well, there was this older man who lived alone in our neighborhood, retired. He had a nice house and a swimming pool, and all summer long all the girls from the neighborhood would hang out there all day. Our parents were fine with it. He was really nice and didn’t mind. We had a lot of fun there. But then one night he died unexpectedly in his sleep. That’s when I began to wake up in the middle of the night afraid that God would take me too. I would run to my parents’ room and climb into bed with them — that’s the only way I could sleep. Until one day Dad said I was too big to sleep with them anymore, and since then nights have been dark, cold, and lonely.”

As this story sank in I had one more question. “Did anything weird or inappropriate happen with the neighbor?” I asked. “Not that I can remember…” she trailed off. “But of all the girls that hung out at his house, I think I had the most close and special relationship with him.” I took a deep breath and decided to leave it there.

It turns out that I was the first guy she ever felt safe with. There was something about the way I listened, the way I touched her, and the way I articulated my own emotions that put her at ease in my presence. And now I understood that fate had brought us together so we could walk through our anxieties together. I sensed that we stood at a threshold.

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Swept Away

Returning to that first fateful night after the show: the next thing I remember after making out in the bathrooms is riding in the back of someone’s car. Shelly and I continued to kiss and hug. I was surprised by the thickness of her waist and the way my hands and arms sank into her when I squeezed, but I liked it. She was a very good kisser. We weren’t saying much, as I was still pretty roasted. The next thing I remember was rolling around on a bed in a back room at some house I had never been to, fully clothed, but very wrapped up in each other. We started talking, although I have no idea what about.

The next night, Saturday, I was aglow with anticipation of another party that she had planned with her closest friends. I remember arriving together and being greeted with inquisitive looks. As soon as I got there someone handed me a beer. There were a lot of people, although the house was small. I was introduced to several people whose names I already knew and who probably already knew mine, but the formality of it cemented the fact that I was with her. And that turned out to be a very big deal. She knew virtually everybody at our school (her father still taught there — more about that later) and she seemed to have many friends. Suddenly I found myself conversing with a bunch of seniors — well-known popular people — and they were curious about me.

I had walked in the door shy and inhibited. One or two beers later a complete transformation occurred. I vaguely knew that one of the signs of alcoholism is a radical change in personality when drinking, but I wasn’t reflecting on it at the time. What I felt was the crushing weight of self-conscious inhibition that had tormented me since being assaulted by Walt was suddenly lifted. I was free: unafraid and exuberant to be the person I had been in sixth grade. I was funny. I was zany. I found I could converse with people, and I loved to hear one after another say, “Wow, I had no idea you were such a fun/interesting person!” It was amazing. Obviously, I wanted more. I also experienced a curious craving for more beer. It was the first time (but not, certainly, the last) that I found myself drinking uncontrollably until there was no more to be had. This became the pattern for how I behaved at high school parties from then on. I realized that being with Shelly was like having a key to the center of the social scene of the drama crowd. It was amazing.

It was the morning after this party that my mom got the phone call. As we puzzled over Cleo’s dire warnings my mom asked me where I thought this might be going. I told her we had simply made out a couple of times, it was casual and I had no reason to think it would lead to anything serious. My mom expressed some concern that Shelly was older than me and already eighteen. I said I knew what I was doing and would be fine. (I didn’t and I wouldn’t, as you will see.)

A couple days later I found myself riding in a car with a guy named Tom. He was a very prominent senior in the drama crowd, sort of the male equivalent of Shelly in terms of his knowledge and influence. Don’t ask me how I got there, he was just giving me a ride to another party or something. It was the first time we had ever spoken, and I will never forget the things he said. He seemed to know Shelly very well, and commented that people thought us getting together was very odd. He said, “Everyone thinks it will last three weeks, tops.” Clearly we were the subject of much gossip and speculation and that thrilled me. He said, “You’re new to the party scene, aren’t you?” I affirmed that and added, “I really don’t have any experience with women, either.” He turned to me and said, “Well, stick with Shelly and you will get very experienced very fast.” So that was the gig: I would be her plaything for a couple of weeks and finally get my wings. I didn’t mind the thought.

It turns out that Tom didn’t know Shelly as well as he thought he did.

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What I knew of Shelly

I need to fill you in on what I knew of Shelly before that fateful night when we got together at a cast party. I mentioned that it came out of nowhere. Nothing in my story up to this point foreshadows it, and absolutely no one at the time would have pictured the two of us together. And yet there was a certain kind of inevitability to it, which became apparent to the two of us only gradually.

I first met Shelly when I was in eighth grade when we were in a speech and drama class together. She was in ninth grade, as was the majority of students in that elective. A part of me loved the course because it was so interactive. We did improvisational exercises, script reading, speeches, and so forth. I was painfully shy at that point, although I would have thrived on it in elementary school. Truth is, the abuse from my stepfather had really taken a toll on me socially. My social blossoming in the band room had yet to take place, and I felt a bit intimidated by the older kids in the class. But it was fun. Shelly and I got along just fine. She was very extraverted, joking and laughing all the time. She loved being the center of attention, and she was hilarious. She was five foot four with long blond hair, thick and straight. Her face was pretty enough but her ample Macedonian nose made her brown eyes look smaller. None of that mattered when she talked, because her voice and facial expressions were animated and fascinating. She could easily capture the attention of a room full of people.

One day in class a group of the ninth-grade boys began making jokes about her breasts, which of course everyone knew were the largest in the whole school. It was her claim to fame, and she didn’t seem shy about it. Although she was laughing it off and coming up with snarky retorts, I sensed she was beginning to get uncomfortable. I suddenly found myself telling the guys in a stern voice to knock it the hell off and leave her alone. They were shocked at my sudden intrusion, but they sheepishly complied. She acted like it was no big deal and she had the whole situation under control, but after the guys turned away she threw me a glance. There was a lot of information in that glance: surprise, gratitude, and curiosity all mixed together. One of my older sisters was an early developer (fifth grade) and back in those days men made all sorts of ignorant assumptions on that basis. I remember my sister crying at the way she was treated by boys and men of all ages, including sexual assault. That must be where my sudden courage originated. I felt empathy and indignation.

After that we conversed sometimes in class, and had fun doing improv together. I loved it when she laughed at my jokes. But that was our entire relationship: one semester of middle school getting to know each other a tiny little bit. In high school we would see each other around, but we never talked. She was very wrapped up in choir, drama, and musical theater. She had an amazing singing voice and was the strongest soprano in our high school. She often accompanied the choir on the piano. The two of us had been involved in two musical theater productions prior to that spring, where she now played the part of Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! while I played the piano in the orchestra pit. It was over the course of the many rehearsals where I was providing the musical accompaniment that we began to feel each other’s presence more and more.

Everyone in our school knew who both of us were, since she stood out in voice and stage work, I in music. But she being the extravert and me being the nerd, no one would have imagined us dating, including me. Especially with her being a year-and-a-half older. And when I say she was an extravert, I mean she was a true drama queen: president of the Thespians club, organizer of cast parties, godmother to the cast, locus of attention, and the life of every party. If you wanted to know any gossip, just ask her. If you were wondering where the next party was going to be, ask her. She cared about how everyone was doing, and they went to her for advice. She was also a straight-A student and was ambitious about her future: really a remarkable person, frankly. This is all I knew of her prior to that fateful night, except for one other detail.

I said she was the center of attention and the life of the party. Well she definitely did like to party. By that I mean drink. And make out with boys. Actually, she had a reputation. Maybe it started with the anatomical features that evoked assumptions about her proclivities, especially when she made the most of opportunities for humor with her Mae West impressions and bawdy jokes. She didn’t seem to mind that everyone considered her “the biggest slut at our high school.” She took it in stride, seemed to enjoy the notoriety. Perhaps that was why I wasn’t entirely surprised to find myself making out with her that night. My number had come up, I assumed. It was just my turn, perhaps.

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My Mom Gets an Unexpected Phone Call

“I got a very strange phone call this morning,” my mom said. It was approaching noon Sunday, the 9th of April, 1978. I will always remember it. I was hungover from a cast party the night before, the first time I had ever gotten drunk two nights in a row. I asked her to tell me about the “strange” phone call, and she began, “Well, it was Shelly1 Staival’s mom, Cleo. I haven’t heard from her in a long time, although we know each other quite well since we were in Faculty Wives2 together for years. After some friendly small talk I asked to what I owed the pleasure of her call. Her tone suddenly became very urgent and she said, ‘Carolyn, what are we going to do about the kids?'” My mom told me that confused her: what about the kids? Cleo said, “We have to do something. I heard they are dating. We have to do something to stop them.” My mom got a bit flummoxed and sputtered back, “Well, I don’t know what you have in mind. Kirk told me all about it. It seems to me they are old enough now that if they decide to date each other there’s nothing we can do about it.” Cleo took a deep breath and replied, “Well, we can’t just let that happen. Your son is so gifted and has such a bright future ahead of him — and I know my daughter. She is so intense she will consume him, deflect him from his goals and destroy his life.”

We sat there in silence for a few moments as we processed the implications. Shelly’s mom, whom I hadn’t met, sounded crazy to me. And how antiquated the notion of controlling your teenage children’s dating choices was! I was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, and Shelly had already been eighteen for a few months. We most certainly would continue dating if that’s what we wanted. But I owe the reader an explanation as this is all coming out of nowhere.

What happened was that on the previous Friday evening after opening night of the Spring Musical, I was invited to go to a cast party. I honestly don’t remember who I got a ride with, but it was at a little “country club” just outside of town. I use the term “country club” cautiously, as it was merely an acre of land surrounded by a chain link fence. There was a pool, a covered picnic area, and a couple of tennis courts. The rest was a large grassy field for whatever. We had been members when I was growing up: I took swimming lessons there when I was about seven. I had never been there after dark, so the experience of the cast party was surreal. I don’t think we even had permission to be there, but somebody obviously had a key to the gate. There was beer, of which I happily consumed several cans, and I even took a few puffs of a joint that was being passed around. This was only the second time I had tried smoking. Let me tell you, the beer and the pot combined hit me hard. I remember being in a highly altered state, just wandering around talking to people, then becoming very quiet. When the chaos and shenanigans started overwhelming my senses, I wandered off to the pool facility where there was a large restroom and changing area. There were a few people milling about in there talking and laughing, but I just retreated to a nearby wall and leaned against the cool cinderblocks, zoning out.

Suddenly Shelly was standing in front of me, looking directly into my face as if trying to solve a puzzle. Without a word she stepped forward, put her arms around my shoulders and planted a sweet, wet kiss on my lips. The similarity with what Kelly had done four-and-a-half years earlier is striking, and my response was the same. Which is to say I received the kiss passively, in shock. But I liked it. She pulled back, intently surveying my expression for any kind of feedback. I looked past her, over her shoulder and, as if speaking to someone else, said in my best Spock voice, “Captain! I appear to be receiving a curious labial stimulus.”

Her jaw dropped, then she burst into laughter. She moved in a second time, took me in her arms, and we began “making out” for the first time. The first time for us, the first time for me, but certainly not the first time for her. So now I need to give you some background on who Shelly was, at least as far as I knew her up to that point.

  1. My wife Sarah [real name], whose advice I trust, has told me I need to make up fake names from here on out, so Shelly and Cleo Staival are not their real names. ↩︎
  2. Back in the early 1960s, when most of the high school teachers were men, there was actually an organization called Faculty Wives where the spouses of faculty met together socially. Shelly and my parents already knew each other when we were born. ↩︎
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A New Religion

I grew up in a big Catholic family with twenty-three first cousins but by the time I was in eighth grade half my aunts and uncles were divorced. My mom remarried and my stepfather, who was an ordained Methodist minister, turned out to be psycho. My mom threw him out of our house soon after my thirteenth birthday, but the two-year marriage had left me quite damaged. (I am summarizing for people who might not have read my synoptic “From Boom to Bust” thread.) I discovered a new worldview in the book, Dune, and found myself embracing humanism. I have talked about reading a lot of sci-fi and philosophy. What I haven’t mentioned much is the television show Star Trek.

Star Trek was airing in prime time when I was six and seven years old. I mentioned sitting with my dad in the big easy chair watching it with him, being terrified yet fascinated. By the time I was thirteen the show was in syndication. We would get home from school and be on our own for several hours before my mom got home from work. I would watch an episode of Star Trek almost every day. Eventually I had seen every episode multiple times. Two of my best friends were also into it: Chuck and Alan. (Chuck and I started out in beginning band together in eighth grade, having been friends since kindergarten. Alan was the airplane nerd from the Bay Area whose mother was the school librarian.) Chuck and I were obsessed with the show. We bought and read books about it, including the making of the series and the science upon which it was based. Chuck’s dad was an architect and we both had taken drafting in eighth grade. We set about designing our own starships, drawing up detailed floor plans and doing our best to sketch the shapes of the ships. We got into philosophical arguments about specific episodes (we would rarely agree on anything).

We were all somewhat secretive about it. You have to understand: back in those days Star Trek was just this campy, weird show that had been on for only two seasons. The entirety of the Star Trek “universe” was just some re-runs on afternoon TV. People who were really into it were considered weird nerds. It wasn’t something to brag about. But actually it was a bold and innovative concept — with the potential to become a new religion. Instead of ancient myths involving warring tribes in the Middle East, we are given a mythical future, wherein mankind has overcome our barbaric past by means of science and reason. On the bridge of the Enterprise we have, in addition to the All American Hero captain Kirk, an African woman, a Russian, an Asian, and an Alien working side by side. In 1967, in the middle of the war in Vietnam and the nuclear standoff with the USSR, this was a shocking vision of the future — almost too much to hope for. I grew up doing bomb drills in school. We all figured we might be wiped out in an atomic holocaust at any moment. Star Trek offered a vision of hope for the human future. It wasn’t mere entertainment: it was philosophical speculation of the best kind.

One day in high school this guy who had recently moved to our town from the Bay Area appeared on campus wearing a Star Fleet shirt and Vulcan ears. Everybody was talking about it and laughing. “Have you seen ‘Spock’ yet?” I had to admit he looked pretty good: he even had the Starfleet standard haircut — in the seventies when everyone was looking scrappy, or had feathered hair. It turns out my friend Alan was hanging out with him. Alan and I never hung out at school together. I would go to his house for sleep-overs and such, but I don’t think anyone really knew we were friends. I’m not sure why, but it felt like something I wanted to keep secret. Anyway, he called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to Sacramento to a Star Trek meeting. I had no idea there were such things, but I said yes. The three of us, Alan, “Spock” and I carpooled over to a lecture hall at Sac State where the meeting was held. There were mostly grownups there. I was considered pretty weird by most of the students at my high school, but even I was saying to myself, “Man, these people are really nerdy.” And the atmosphere! It was very serious, as if we were in church. There was mention of Star Trek conventions, which sounded amazing. But the room got very quiet when someone who had recently returned from a meeting with an affiliated Star Trek club in Los Angeles gave us all an electrifying update. There were talks — just talks at this point — about the potential for a Star Trek movie. Word was that most of the original cast had signed on to the idea, and there was funding and studio interest as well. It was likely to be a full-fledged feature film! Holy cow! I sensed the tension mounting in the room as people were afraid to hope yet were exuberant at the thought of it. You may be laughing now, but seriously, for Star Trek aficionados it was a first glimmering of the glorious future to come in the following decades.

My love of Star Trek was a secret I shared with just two special friends, but perhaps it showed up with my band friends whenever I rolled out my Spock impression. While Captain Kirk resonated with my heart, especially reminding me of myself in elementary school, Spock represented what I was striving to become during my teen years. Having emerged from puberty being prone to emotional hysteria, Spock’s disciplined dedication to the principles of logic captured my own struggle to use my awakening mind to override my turbulent emotions. I amused myself endlessly trying to craft Spock-ish phraseology. I remember one time during band rehearsal when Tana turned to me and said, “Ooh, I love that harmony.” I responded with, “I agree: the nodal interference in the overlapping wave forms produced by the oscillating columns of air does produce an effect that is most pleasing to the ear.” She looked at me like I was nuts, then burst into laughter.

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A Dark Winter

My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. She works with all kinds of kids and knows a lot about neurology. She tells me I have “sensory issues” and she could have helped me with them as a child. Actually, she says she could help me with them now, if I were willing. I’m thinking about it. What I do know is that my hypersensitivity as a child really impacted my life in both positive and negative ways. Take music, for example. I hear things in music that others don’t, like bees see colors that are beyond what our eyes can process. The positive side of this is that I am a good musician. The down side is that I can’t filter it out. Just the other day I was in the grocery store to pick up three items. Several times I had to stop and gather my thoughts, because I lost track of where I was and what I was there for. It’s not dementia. It was the fucking music that was playing in the background. It’s always been a problem for me. I’m supposed to be choosing a loaf of bread and all I can think about is the fact that they opted to use trombone for that musical phrase. Add narrow aisles and lots of people and we have all the ingredients for a psychological breakdown. I avoid stores and other crowded places. I have been to one or two big rock concerts in my life. The only way I survived was by allowing myself to break from reality and float in a borderline dream state. Utterly overwhelming and horrible. Even when it was Springsteen. If it hadn’t been for the beer and weed I would probably have made a break for it like I did at the haunted house. I have never understood how “normal” people can enjoy the things they do.

I went with a buddy to just one high school dance when I was in tenth grade. As you would guess, it was nightmarish. I tried to “dance” one dance, but the sight of all the other kids having such a great time as I wondered where the exits were made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t understand how guys got the courage to ask a girl to dance, much less on a date. My lame attempts with Trisha and Tana stand out in my memory because I had finally developed enough self-confidence to make a move, but the humiliation and remorse sent me reeling back into my cave. It’s important to note that all this was happening in the immediate aftermath of John the Cat’s death. And while I do recall sobbing myself to sleep one night soon after the tragedy, they were bitter tears and it didn’t help. I mentioned earlier that John kept the nightmares away. Now they were back, and it was brutal. I mean the content of the nightmares was often brutal. The worst involved coming upon a cat that looked like John and seeing that it was mortally injured. As it cried out in pain I knew the only thing to do was end its misery. So I grabbed a shovel to do the deed, but you know how in dreams sometimes it’s like you’re moving through molasses. I tried, but while each blow made things worse, the cat wouldn’t die. Being torn between horror and frustration caused me to wake up. I have had variations of that nightmare many times since. Other nightmares involved fist fights, again where I could barely move, or finding myself on a battlefield with bullets and bombs flying, stark naked with nowhere to run. Or being chased by a demon and, my escape being blocked, forced to turn and confront the monster only to see that — as if to mock me — it was wearing the face of Walt, twisted snarl and all.

All this talk of nightmares and dissociative states of mind brings up a crucial memory. I was seven years old, I think. We were camping in the redwoods. In the middle of the night I had a nightmare. In my dream I am wandering around the campground in the dark, barefoot and lost. Then there is a bear, which sees me and begins pursuit. I’m trying to run away but — molasses of course. I see a camper trailer up ahead and I make a bee line for the door. I feel the bear right behind me as I grab the handle of the screen door and try to turn the knob. It’s locked. I’m dead. So I snap awake, only to find myself standing exactly where I was in the dream. But now I’m awake and I can see that there is no bear. Completely freaked out, I begin banging on the door and screaming. Some old guy comes to the door saying, “What is it?” He opens the door and sees me, knows I must be lost. I had been sleepwalking again. He was kind and reassuring as he helped me back to our tent about fifty feet away. I found my sleeping bag and went back to sleep, my family completely unaware of the incident.

I told that story to illustrate what it feels like whenever I am triggered and begin to dissociate: panic is near and it’s hard to discern what is real and what is exaggerated by my imagination. If it’s a physical threat I might react violently before I even think. If it’s some kind of emergency my mind will snap into a hyper-alert state, completely depersonalized, as if some other grownup has taken over and I am just a spectator. If I am overwhelmed by sadness and grief, I simply lose track of myself entirely. It’s like a fugue state, but I still know who and where I am. Have you ever walked into a room and just stood there because you forgot why you were there? For me it’s like I have forgotten who I am and why am am alive — why anybody would want to be alive. I am completely detached from all feelings and motivations. Other times I am debilitated by strong emotions, but I can’t bring to mind any particular reason why I would be having them: the connection between the emotions and their source has been ruptured.

I remember one time when I was thirteen, not long after Walt left. For no apparent reason I decided to leave the house without my glasses on. That means the whole world would be a blur and I wouldn’t feel safe at all. But I just wandered down the street, then over to the next block where a busy street cut through the center of town. It was a residential neighborhood with nice houses, but there was plenty of traffic. I wondered what would happen if I just laid down on the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street, like I was passed out. Would anybody notice or care? If so, I would pretend to be unresponsive. So I did it. Lying in the sun feeling the cool grass against my cheek, I listened as cars whizzed by, letting go. Giving up. Refusing to go on with anything. A car pulled up. I heard the door close followed by footsteps. High heeled shoes? A lady’s voice: “Young man, are you ok? What’s wrong?” I refused to move, feigning sleep. She touched my shoulder, “Are you all right? Do you need help?” I suddenly felt bad for her. She was so kind and concerned! I opened my eyes and saw a nicely-dressed, conservative-looking woman with gray hair looking at me with a worried expression. I said something like, “I must have fallen asleep.” She probably thought I was drunk or on something. If she knew the truth, that this was a cry for help, I don’t know what she would have done. I desperately wished she could just take me with her, away, anywhere. Give me a new life. Sheepishly, I stood up, brushed myself off and headed home. I never mentioned this little experiment to anyone or reflected upon it much, but it felt like I was wanting to end my life, psychologically, but unwilling to inflict any violence on myself to achieve it.

John’s death left me empty and numb. Unsurprisingly, the dark and cold of December have always been devastating to my mood. I listened to music and read books. I couldn’t feel my own emotions so I immersed myself in the emotions of others. I read short stories by Kurt Vonnegut, a gothic romance “My Cousin Rachel” by Daphne du Maurier, “A Bridge Too Far” by Cornelius Ryan, and — at my sister’s suggestion — “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin. My crush on Trisha became obsessive and I began talking about it with my therapist. I told him I was having trouble wanting to live. I was going through the motions of a very busy life and doing my best to mask the existential crisis I was in. There was a bright spot, though. Trisha wanted to audition for the part of Ado Annie in the Spring musical, “Oklahoma!” and she asked me to help her rehearse it. We met several times in a practice room at school. I played, she sang, I coached. She could really belt out a tune! I felt there was no way she wouldn’t get the part and I am afraid she might have been convinced by my enthusiasm, biased though it was. But she didn’t get the part. Actually, it wouldn’t have mattered how good she was, she wouldn’t have gotten the part. Our drama director, my dad’s old friend and comedy partner, casted the leads before he even picked the plays: the auditions were just perfunctory. Or maybe a good opportunity for kids to practice auditioning, but the die was already cast. My hopes for a rekindling with her were dashed when she seemed to withdraw from me in shame. I felt like I had let her down.

January came and rehearsals began for the show. I was the rehearsal pianist. In my ten-part thread I wrote about how busy my schedule was at that point: jazz band before school, symphonic and marching bands in the morning, jazz ensemble during lunch, music theory last period. After school I would ride my bike across town to play the piano for voice lessons, then back to school for musical theater rehearsal. It was brutal, but it was also addictive. Whenever I was playing an instrument it forced my attention to a focus. My breathing was regulated, the time was structured, and my nerves were soothed by the sounds. Music was my medicine, and I think it saved my life. It also provided a ready-made social life. My brother Dan, a year older than me, had been mostly invisible at school. But his friend, Kit, had been cast as Will the cowboy (the lead) and he convinced my brother to try out. Turns out my brother could really dance! All told, there were about one hundred and fifty people involved in the production when you count cast, crew, and musicians. It was the first time my brother and I had overlapping social circles, and the first time many of my friends learned that I even had an older brother. When we both starting going to cast parties a whole new dimension opened up in my life.

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