The Summer of My Discontent

Let’s end the suspense right now. I didn’t get the job. Del Rey decided to go with the other guy. Since last October, when I quit my job because of a good chance of having my first novel published, things had been on a steady decline. Once June rolled around, things took a sharp turn for the worst. By the time you read this I can’t really say where I’ll be. I wrote this column in August and have asked Mr. Jason Brice to post it for me. There’s a very good likelihood that this will be the last Monkey House I ever write.

Marathon Man
I waited and waited for Del Rey to call. Most jobs that you send a resume in for you don’t expect to hear back from if you didn’t get it. But since I’d been on two interviews, was one of the two finalists, and knew several people in the office, I expected at least the courtesy of knowing I was being turned away. For two weeks I didn’t sleep, barely ate, and bit my fingernails down to nubs. When I finally found out the truth, it didn’t come from one of the people doing the hiring. It came from Watts.

She called me one afternoon and asked if I’d heard anything about the job yet. I told her I hadn’t. She had. I didn’t get it. Looking back on it, I can say for the first time in my life I was truly stunned. I hung up the phone and felt nothing. I tried to cry, which seemed the obvious response, but I couldn’t muster any tears. After a few minutes of just sitting on my couch I got up and went into my bedroom. On my bed I started telling myself that this was it; this was the moment that would finally make me snap. I’d become detached from reality and reduced to one of those people who just sits in a chair, twitching, staring off into the void. In my head I kept saying, “I’m done. I’m done. I’m done. I’m done.” But none of it felt genuine. I was trying to force a reaction because I didn’t know how to react. What I was experiencing was pure shock.

After a while I got up and went back to the living room and spent the rest of the day watching television. It was all I could think to do. The next day I woke up and started writing. I’d been slowly working on my second novel since December and had only gotten halfway through by June, three times as long as it had taken me to write the entirety of my first novel. I suppose the disappointments of that first book falling through took the wind out of my writing sails. But now, with the Del Rey dream job gone, all I had to fall back on was my writing. So I began a marathon. I withdrew from contact with everyone and everything and focused only on writing. Six days later I had written a hundred and fifty pages. The second novel was complete.

A week after news of the Del Rey job came down I was at my computer, reaching out to every tenuous contact I had, having Watts make and mail copies of my novel to everyone I had some in with. I felt good about this book, sure that it was more commercial than my first. Of course, even the most extreme optimist wouldn’t imagine seeing any kind of return for at least six months. It was the middle of June. Watts was leaving her job at Ballantine at the end of July, which meant my freelance proofreading work would dry up then. With no other means of income I wouldn’t be able to sign a new lease, leaving me out on the street at the end of August. No matter how good I felt about my latest book, I couldn’t depend on it to solve the problems I was facing.

The Lit Fuse
By the time the book was finished I was pretty fucked in the head. I still hadn’t come to terms with losing the Del Rey job. I’d spent ten days locked away from all outside contact, lost in a world where I played god. Once the book was done I was quick to realize how much of a loser I felt like. And with that attitude it became very easy to continue my sabbatical from the rest of the world. My self-esteem wasn’t just in the toilet. It had already gone through the pipes, into the sewer and washed out to sea. I ended up spending most of June sequestered within the walls of my third-floor walk-up.

Moby finally dragged me out of the apartment the last Sunday in June for the Gay Pride Parade. It was the furthest thing from a reintroduction to reality. Over-the-top parade goers, lots and lots of drinking, and a lesbian ramming her tongue down my throat. Like I said, not quite reality. But at least it got me out of the apartment.

The next weekend was Fourth of July and Watts had invited people to Brooklyn to watch the fireworks. I arrived first and things seemed to be fine. Moby arrived and we grilled some food. That night we went to a friend’s place and watched from the roof as the fireworks went off over the water. Fireworks tend to bore me, though. And when I’m bored my mind wanders, never to good things.

Back at Watts’ place, Moby left soon after. I ended up on the couch, withdrawing, uncommunicative. Watts went to bed when she realized I wasn’t up for talking. That’s when a million thoughts started bouncing around in my head. Everything that had ever bothered me, no matter how small, was fighting for space, for dominance. I couldn’t focus on anything. It became so overwhelming that I started to hyperventilate. Before I knew it, I was having yet another anxiety attack.

By this point in my life I’ve had so many of the damn things that I can get them under control fairly easily. I managed to calm myself down enough to get my breathing back to normal, but I knew I had to get out of there. Quietly I gathered my things and left for the subway. An hour later I was almost to my apartment when Watts pulled up in her car. She wanted to talk. I told her to just forget about me and go home. Eventually, reluctantly, she did.

Two days later, on a Sunday night, I used half a bottle of Southern Comfort to wash down half a bottle of pills.

Boy, Interrupted
The twisted thing about the whole scenario was that I had the bottle of pills in one hand and my cell phone, with Watts’ number at the ready, in the other. It was literally like a drumming motion; the pill bottle went up, the pill bottle went down, as the pill bottle went down the cell phone went up. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. If I wanted to kill myself I wouldn’t have made any phone calls. Twenty minutes after I made the call Watts arrived. Twenty minutes after that I was in a nearby emergency room getting my stomach pumped, then filled with charcoal.

Sparing the reader some of the more fun details, once I was medically cleared in Queens I was transported to Manhattan for a psych evaluation. A mere formality. I’d swallowed pills. It wasn’t an accident. I was going into the cuckoo’s nest, no two ways about it. Standard operating procedure. They asked me if I wanted to go voluntarily or involuntarily. I asked if I had a choice. They said I was going in either way, but that it looks better if I go voluntarily. I asked if I would be able to leave whenever I wanted. They said no. Yeah, that sounded real “voluntary” to me.

Most of that Monday was spent sitting around waiting for a room. After overhearing one orderly compare himself to a zookeeper, and several people refer to me as “that one” or “the other one” rather than apply any humanity to my existence, I was checked into the psychiatric ward at Mt. Sinai. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

The psych ward wasn’t as scary as movies had led me to believe. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not fun, just not the raving loony bin you might expect. The people are crazy, and it is disturbing to be around them, but most of them are quiet and don’t seem to be much of a threat. Except, of course, for the roommate I got stuck with. All I can say is take every bad stereotype of the angry, young black man and multiply it by ten. Before I met him I was told that he was not happy about having a roommate. When I first saw the room he had just finished destroying it after a tantrum. And by the time I had been discharged he’d been sedated and thrown into the padded room. But the doctor made a point of telling me that the kid wasn’t going to rape me in my sleep, so I slept reeeeeeal well those nights.

I figured my best bet to get out of that place was to be as forthcoming as possible. The first day I met with the attending and immediately began to spill my life story, all the shit that had helped build to that moment. The death of my grandfather, moving to a town where I never fit in, my parents’ divorce and all the subsequent manipulations that went along with it, the animosity between my brother and I, my mother betraying me, moving to New York, the first novel falling through, bankruptcy, unemployment, and the looming threat of homelessness. I made it very clear that the majority of my problems come from my current financial situation and that, once I had a job and knew where I’d be living, things would even out.

Demonstrating how introspective and aware of my problems I am, the doctor naturally tried to sell me on psychotherapy. Now, personally, I think it’s about as real as voodoo; if you believe in it, then it can have an affect on your life. I’m not putting anyone down for buying into it, it’s just not my bag. And I’m not willing to turn my life over to happy pills either. I’d like to believe that I have the strength within me, somewhere, to deal with all the problems facing me. In my mind, the day I start relying on drugs or the ramblings of some shrink, then I’m no longer self-sufficient. Denis Leary once said, “Life sucks. Get a helmet.” I guess I’m still just trying to find a helmet that fits.

Further Down the Spiral
Thanks to my openness with the head shrink, I was discharged from Mt. Sinai in record time. One of the conditions they usually have when discharging psych patients is that they must have a therapy appointment set up before they leave. Whether the person actually goes to the appointment or not is up to them, but the appointment at least has to be made. But I was out of work and didn’t have insurance, which meant no way to pay someone a pile of cash to sit there and listen to me bitch for an hour. So the only thing close to an appointment I got was a number to contact the Medicaid office to see about clearing up my hospital bill. Ironically, when I went to the Medicaid office they told me I made too much money a month to qualify. So, even if I wanted to go into therapy, I couldn’t.

My little pill-popping incident tacked on another six grand to my bankruptcy filing, which I still don’t have enough money to pay for yet.

The next weekend was surreal. I ended up going to Philadelphia with Moby. I had to keep reminding myself that I had been locked up just a few days before, and a few days before that I had technically attempted suicide. But it was good to get out of the city for a few hours, if even to go to another city.

The weekend after that was not good. That was the weekend I broke up with Watts. I know! I know! Right now, half the readers are swearing at their monitors. “You fucking idiot!” I hear you. And maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. All I know is that things between us had been weird since I sequestered myself in my apartment. She wasn’t happy about the way I was treating her and I was letting little things turn into big things. Everything just got so stressful until I just walked away.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “well, at least you’ve got your friend Moby to help you out, right?”

Simon’s Inferno
At the end of July, Moby’s friend invited us to his share on Fire Island. For the uninitiated, Fire Island is a hedonistic little gay paradise located on a thin sandbar off the southern coast of Long Island. I always thought it was asinine when people say, “What happens in (insert vacation spot), stays in (vacation spot)”. But now I know why rules like that were established.

When we got to Fire Island I arrived with the attitude that I was taking a break from myself for the weekend. I didn’t want to think about all the badness in my life. They call vacations ‘getaways’ and that’s what I wanted. Like it would be that easy.

It was a Saturday afternoon and we were staying until the following night. The owners had a pool at the house, which was also right on the beach. Moby and I tried out the ocean, then took a long stroll down the sand. One of the other guests served a great dinner. Then it was time to start drinking. By one a.m. I was skinny dipping in the pool. By two the rest of the house had gone to bed and I was wandering off to other parts of the island. Apparently, taking a break from myself involved getting completely wasted, wandering around the woods naked, and having random sex with faceless strangers. It also involved stumbling back to the house and into Moby’s room at three in the morning. Nothing happened, but that was more because Moby doesn’t like to be woken from a sound sleep. I ended trudging over to my room and passing out.

The next morning was awkward. We had a clumsy, indirect conversation about the night before while waiting for food at the Burger Queen. Few words were spoken on the ferry ride back. Since then I’ve exchanged sporadic e-mails with Moby, invited him to hang out on a couple occasions, but I haven’t seen him in person. There’s history I’m leaving out here that might show me to be a completely inconsiderate bastard. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m worried my drunken antics have cost me yet another friend.

Future Uncertain
It’s October now and everything I own is in storage. Who knows where I’m resting my head at night. Most of you reading this had returned expecting another year of The Monkey House. I wish I could have delivered it for you. Through all of this I’ve lost a lot of things that were important to me, things that made me happy. This column was one of those things.

So much has happened in the last twelve months and most of it has been bad. I wish I could be one of those people who has a right to blame that idiot in Washington for the shitty economy. But the fact is, unlike all the unfortunate people who have lost their jobs, I did this to myself. Maybe I should have thought ahead, expected the job market to be this bad. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made my own bed and it’s no one else’s fault.

People always tell me that I look like Kevin Costner. I’m not exactly the biggest Costner fan, but I can kind of see the resemblance. The self-indulgent Costner epics tend to all follow a similar pattern. When we first meet the main character, played by Costner, he is at what he thinks is the lowest point in his life. The plot kicks in and we see the hero elevated to a high, only to soon see him knocked down to an even lower point than he was before. Then the movie usually spends the next three hours just wailing on the guy, pounding him into the ground until there’s nothing left. Just when it seems he can’t take anymore, he begins an ascent. In the end he has settled at a bittersweet middle ground, somewhere near contentment.

Beyond the physical similarities, Costner and I have one other thing in common. We share the same first name. My name is Kevin Mac Donald. I was a/k/a Simon.

From The Monkey House