Rod Amis - Unbound

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NEW ORLEANS - 7 August, 2002: My pal Scott, of the raspy and profound-sounding voice, has been a lifesaver over the past few weeks. He's sent my resume around, made phone-calls and helped me brainstorm how to get out of this pit of joblessness. Nothing's panned out yet, though. Mostly, it's just added to my foot miles clocked daily and bouts of impatience and frustration.

Yesterday, he caught me on my way to the park, spiraling into another deep pit of depression. I hadn't eaten in about three days (I didn't tell him that) had no cigarettes and --- after multiple disappointing phonecalls --- could not come up with a single thing to do next to constructively change my situation.

Scott caught me at the top of this spiral. Impeccable timing. This morning, after I'd made the two mile trek to put in another application, we met for coffee on the return leg of my trip so that he could give me a couple of books on resume writing. I tend to use a Euro-style CV and he suggests it might take people here aback a bit. I find it difficult to adjust to the decades behind my former world this place inhabits and how it affects people's mindsets.

You will have noted that, over these last years, I've gone from taking the shape of my container - my old form - to decidedly holding my own. I'm getting too old to be that pliable, I feel. It's time for the environment to do a little adjusting of its own.

Among the good things Scott has turned me onto is a place in the Quarter where I can get free wireless Internet connection via the Macintosh software Airport, which My Darling carries with her. That makes things a bit easier, as it's close to my footpaths these days. All I have to do is come up with enough scratch for a cup of coffee or a beer and I'm golden for at least an hour. AND the coffee shop with free wired connectivity has finally opened in the Marigny. That means that I don't always have to make the trek to Matt's house anymore, if I have money. Big IF these days.

When Scott rolled up, I was thinking about how I was living almost entirely on hope. I have no way of verifying that anything (positive) will actually happen, all I can do is hope.

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9 August, 2002: I have lots of close friends with August birthdays. Aries and Leos just seem to get along well and accept the fiery nature of each other's temperaments. But that's a problem, too. Every year that I can remember over the last twenty, Barbara's birthday has been very important to me. I try to do more than just telephone. I also try to send a card, no matter what my circumstances, at the very least. She makes a Big Deal about my birthday, too. So, this year, part of my emotional burden is missing out on that pleasure. A cup of coffee is out of reach right now, let alone a card.

In these circumstances, it gets easy to mope.

---

I received a scolding letter from abroad this week, too. It asked me, with all the contacts I've made over the years, all the mitzvahs I've done here and there, why I don't call in some favors.

There's a two-part answer to that one:

1. GUILT: I'm already in the position of owing and being obligated to ALL of my close friends. How's it going to make them feel if I suddenly ramp up to another level of mooching and don't repay them before handling my own situation?
   
   
2. SHAME: You lose Rep points with your well-heeled acquaintances if the first time you contact them since you were In The Mix is when you're totally down-and-out. The National Ethos dictates, despite all the copious evidence to the contrary, that if you're poor it's your own fault.

Our society and culture and all of its institutions and practices are perfect, after all. Aren't they?

---

One of my two birds did come through. The woman in Georgia, who I helped before her move, sent along what she owed me for one of the above-mentioned mitzvahs. It was much appreciated, almost as much as needed. I say "almost" because she omitted to send it to the address provided. I had to find a way to make it across town to retrieve the ducats. Still.

It provided for cigarettes and enough to purchase some Internet access time (in trade - you at least have to buy something when you sit in these cafes) to do my weekly chores. AND

...that access time led to a new Web design contract I've started as the week ends. So, I have a job. It's a small job, but " 'err job is better than nare job," as the old folks used to say.

I shall eat again soon.

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10 August, 2002: One running joke we have here is that, like Bill Clinton, I can't catch a break. Even when things are seemingly going my way, for a moment, some new obstacle to my happiness arises. That's what happened this weekend with the money my new client was sending. I received both e-mail and telephonic confirmation that the money was there. But when I went to pick it up Saturday morning, it wasn't there. Zip. Zero. Nada.

I was confused. When I called to confirm, I discovered that some type of error had occurred that could not be resolved on my end. That meant I would need to make an expensive call across country to have it sussed out at that end. Then the time factor had to be taken into account. I would have to wait until a decent hour there before calling.

Nothing good just happens for me. I always have to do my share of extra work to nudge it along. Sheesh.

So I decided to spend the intervening time with you. I always retreat to you when I am waiting - unless, like last week, I'm too busy with some other project. Then, you come at the last moment, as I am putting this magazine to bed for the week. You don't get the tender treatment you deserve at those times. I like to believe that you can discern the difference. You react the same, so I must use my psychic abilities to tell if it makes a difference for you or not.

In that way, it's akin to romancing a statue and there is something slightly perverse in that, no? I often feel there is.

I wonder why you keep coming back, if I'm not pleasing you, but I never get an indication one way or another. Statue.

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I'll reconsider that last statement. There was one period when you seemed to take an absolute joy in my performances. During the period I recounted many of my (failed) love affairs, you sang my praises to the rooftops. As I was told in the scolding letter mentioned above, in reference to two women I'd recently expressed interest in, I seem to have an absolute talent for picking "bent coins" - women born to do me some damage. According to the person who sent me the e-mail, I'd probably make a fortune on a book about all the bad female choices I've made. "You're a magnet for problem women!" she exclaimed.

Maybe I am.

On the other hand, it's more amusing to tell you about the problem women (though some would argue those are the only kind I'm attracted to) from the point of view of storytelling. There are women, who admittedly would also fall into that category, which I have not told you about. I've never mentioned Gale or Sherrie, for example, the first two women I almost married.

Okay, okay, let's get the problems out of the way right now. Gale was suicidal. She committed herself twice while we were involved. She could tell when one of her bad times was coming on and would voluntary commit herself out of concern for me. She reminded me of Cleopatra.

And Sherrie? Well, she told me shortly after we became involved that she had once been a prostitute in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Some people would consider that a problem. I didn't. Like I said, I almost married her.

(Any of my relatives reading this are wagging their heads right now, saying: "Be glad you didn't, fool!" and thanking God I met Deborah.)

But Sherrie wasn't hooking when I met her, she was working in a residential treatment program. She had features that reminded me of the young Bette Davis. Same kind of feisty, challenging temper, too. I like that in a woman. No woman who's too sweet or too docile will ever survive very long in a relationship with an Aries. We're naturally pushy and strong-willed. We need the kind of women who can put us in check.

One reason I probably never mentioned these two women, and a few others, is because they were in my pre-divorce life, which is much more distant than the stories I shared with you - for the most part - and so carry a different emotional heft than anyone pre-divorce (or should I say pre-marriage?) with the exception of the now-legend Lynda.

It was only after the divorce that I started giving my girlfriends those nicknames, you'll recall. I hardly ever think of Jacqui, for example, as Jacqui anymore. In my mind, she'll always be The Count.

Quite a litany of tragic emotional angst, wasn't it? The Count, Lisa the Snake-killer, Monkey, Rox, the Skeleton. I guess I never gave Peggy a nickname, though, huh? That's 'cause she tore my guts out. She finally gave me a true sense of emotional damage.

I don't even want to get close to that again. I suspect that thinking about all that, in detail and for your benefit, was what made the Black Dog bring on my affliction the last time. Some of us know what that led to. I'm in New Orleans now, the American Haiti. That's what that led to.

The scolding e-mail, sent by one of the three women who I am closest with, emotionally and spiritually, today, also said that I need to try to reclaim "the Old Rod." I remember him fondly myself. He was daring, if extremely arrogant, without regrets or this overweening sense of tragic guilt, and he was much funnier than I am myself.

(You seldom think of me as funny these days, do you?)

Actually, I can be a very funny guy. I just try to conceal that in the interest of my new persona as curmudgeon.

To get back to my original point: you LOVED that stuff. You ate it up with a fork. You're emotional voyeurs of "the first water" (heh!) I've figured out. You occasionally enjoy a good rant, like last week, but don't take much to the intellectual expositions I prefer to do. The dirt about my love life sells like hotcakes with you. You should be ashamed! I mean it.

Beth ("Hacker Barbie"), one of the smartest women it's been my pleasure to be involved with, made me promise early on in our relationship that I would never write about her. That, in and of itself, shows that she had pegged my game. As soon as I was ready to turn a woman into a fiction, I was losing interest in her, if I hadn't dumped her already.

But let's face it, if you're the kind of guy who naturally goes for Bent Coins, chances are you intuitively know that the relationship is more about what you'll learn from it than what future it has. You board the train with foreknowledge of the wreck that will happen up ahead in that mountain pass. Maybe that's why I've always succeeded as a journalist rather than a fiction writer: I'm looking to bring back the story, not to describe how the characters got there. Fiction writers want to play God; journalists want to be verbal cameras.

Two of the women I've been most impressed with in this life have been documentary filmmakers. They both married men about whom I felt deeply almost immediately, both writers.

---

If you understand the basics of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, you know that if you compress a lot of living into a very short time - basically living faster than the norm, you also live longer. That means you age faster.

I have made myself living proof of that postulate. I look much older than I really am. I have lived faster and (some will affirm) harder. When I show my California ID of only a few years ago, people do a double take. The person on that ID is a much younger man. He doesn't even have my grey beard. He is heavier than I and has less wrinkles. I look older than my sister-in-law who is ten years my senior.

I have lived faster.

Stalin said, "Promises are like pie crusts: made to be broken." Using a quote from a seriously heinous example, I shall now follow that dictum. I'll do a headline.

Prelude To a Kiss

Happy Birthday, Schweetheart!

The 13th is Barbara's birthday and I can send her nothing except my undying love.

This pains me. She cares about me so much, as she cares about so much in this world. She doesn't appreciate how much I respect and love her. She doesn't know that I plan to live as long as I can to be the New Rod that lives up to her honorifics about The Old Man that she has now known for years and seldom abandoned, despite my MANY, MANY foibles.

It is possible that she doesn't recall our cherished moments (in my mind) over sushi, or cocktails, or just lazing on the Russian River up in northern California when we both had young bodies that we didn't mind exposing on inner tubes as we floated down the river.

An old friend once asked why the two of us never hooked up. That caused (an abortive) attempt for us to try. But that was so much foolishness. I'm too crazy and unconventional and she is too sane.

(NO! This is not a pedestal, Kids)

Barb may just be my Best Friend. Lord knows I need one.

Or maybe, if you are of the inclination to believe in reincarnation, like Martha Rudell and Dragana, she is one of my sisters from some other life. She doesn't send me scolding letters, but she does read me like a book. Like Rudell and Dragana.

She wags her head in pity for my foolish bullheadness and hubris. But she never abandons me (my biggest fear, in case you hadn't figured that out by now).

And licks my wounds after I've taken another header off my go-cart.

There are no better friends than that.

So, in my shoddy Humphrey Bogart imitation, I say: "Happy Birthday, Schweetheart! Thank you for your patience. I'll be a better man next time around. Hope to see you there."

---

My mother's birthday is also this month. It's only a few days away.

---

What is this kiss about? Well, I've already given you tongue, haven't I? I've gone into my Heinrich Firecracker-Instead-of-the-Bomb Lebenrechts Muller, whether you noticed it or not, mode.

I hitch-hiked to California as a youth to get Henry Miller's Blessing, as a writer, from his deathbed. Eve Luna, his last wife, met me in the hospital hallway and asked why I was there.

"The Blessing," I said.

I was probably wild-eyed.

I was definitely wild-eyed after hitching across country.

That was the Old Rod.

Now I am here writing to you in his spirit. But also my own.

Bertrand Russell is also in this heart, as are Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Thomas Mann, Sinclair Lewis.

The point of writing is that every writer is carrying on a conversation across the centuries, as I've told anyone who cared to listen. That's why I respect The Canon. We are conversing across centuries, my darling. That is what we do, in an effort to expose the human soul. IF we get lucky, we construct a cathedral of words that defines humanity. IF we are lucky, as writers, we create something NEW that motivates you.

And then we die.

Or that's what I think.

Baby! Baby, Baby,
When you love me I can't get enough
And I want to spread the news,
That if if feels this good getting used
You just keep on using me
Until you use me up -- Bill Withers

Search www.g21.net [ ] Our Link Partners the Web for

WHAT I LOVE THIS WEEK

1. Barbara

2. The rich life I have lived.

3. The Perfection of God.

4. The scent of a woman. (You know!)

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Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

This year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now he's in the unenviable position of looking for both a job AND a place to live. Couch-surfing sucks! He is not a happy camper. In his spare time, he chases women.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. This town is seducing him the way a spider seduces a fly. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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