Pajama Girl

                I had just left my ex-girlfriend’s place to go home and get ready for work.  Over the months, I’d end up making many of these five a.m. trips across Portland.  I hated getting up that early, and I still do.  These little drives across the city before getting ready for work didn’t, technically make my mornings that much longer.  They just made me get up after the first sound of the alarm.  I hate, hate, hate getting up in the morning, especially at ridiculously early hours, and I’m notorious for hitting the snooze alarm until it stops going off.  Half the time, I just sleep through the alarm, anyway.

                But these mornings together had the additional benefit—apart from the, ahem, obvious one—of getting me out of bed quickly because one of the few things that I hate more than mornings is being a nuisance to the good lady whose bed I share when I have to get up earlier than she does.  Not that there have been many of these bed sharing ladies who get up later than I do, my ex-wife, an ex-live-in-girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend of this story, Tamra.  I had a commute of over an hour, one way, for about 7 years, and I got up early in order to get home at a decent hour.    Right now, I just have my cat, and I don’t give a shit about being quiet for her.  This makes getting up especially difficult for me, even when I’m well rested and have my head on relatively straight.

                I would love to put some of this into an on-line dating profile—along with assurances that I have a great ass—but I don’t want to seem like I’m just looking for a woman to use her just to help me get up early.  I’d also want to have sex with her, and I don’t want to come on that strong.

                So, I was on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, heading toward my place, when a few short blocks from Tamra’s, I saw a woman leaning into the driver side window of a car in a convenience store parking lot.  As I drove by, she pulled away from the car and started flagging me down. 

                Duty was calling.

                Now, I wear many hats.  Man, parent, grandparent, writer, bureaucrat for America, retired soldier, local man-about-town, woodworker, taxpayer, citizen, lover of well-crafted cocktails.  I could go on, but the thing is, I don’t let any of these define me.  I’m just Ted Perrin.  My one, simple goal in life is to be a good man.  I don’t want to be perfect—anymore.  I just want to be a good man who works hard and does good things.  Naturally, I’d prefer to do all this as hilariously as possible, for that is my calling in this world.

                And this, this damsel in distress was an opportunity to do a good thing and to serve my community, for I am a gentleman, and Portland was my community.  So, I pulled over and rolled down my window.  A twenty-ish-year-old girl with dark, shoulder length, somewhat greasy hair leaned in.

                “Can you please give me a ride over by Franklin Tower?” she asked.

                Why, yes I could give her this ride!  I lived very close to Franklin Tower.  So close, indeed, that I could throw a baseball from the backyard of my apartment building and hit it broadside, if only there were no trees or buildings in the way and I could throw a baseball about three or four hundred yards.  But proximity to my home and to my route there were not important, for this was an opportunity to serve my city, and she, my fellow-Portlander, was in need of my service.

                “Uh, sure,” I said, unlocking the door.

                This young woman said, “Oh my God! Thank you!” and she climbed in.  She wore a nondescript hooded sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants.

                I pulled away from the curb, full of myself after deciding to give this young woman a ride home, the smallest token of appreciation that I could give to my community on this cold and dark morning.  I wasn’t going to go too far out of my way, after all.  But deep down, I decided to bask in my own glory for a block or so before asking her the address where she wanted me to drop her off, or what brought her to such low estate, bumming rides across town from strange men, so early in the morning.  I didn’t say it, but I felt this toward her, “Goddamnit, you’re welcome, young lady.” 

                She, however, did not wait for a block or so, “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

                “Uh, sure,” I said.  I can’t remember what was crossing my mind before what happened next, but I was probably thinking about how lucky this girl was that I had picked her up.  I’m so fucking wise, and I give great advice!  I couldn’t wait to bless her with my wisdom.

                “Do you mind?” she said.  This wasn’t exactly the line of questioning that I was expecting, not that I know what I would have expected.  She was leaning over the console, her right hand open and hovering over the imaginary border between the console and the driver’s seat.

                “Uh, no, I guess,” I said, unsure of what was going on, and how it may have been affecting my status as a pillar of the community.  “What—“I started, but she was too quick to act before my full question came out, “—do you mean?”

                Her hand went forth, darting well past the boundary of my personal space and into my nether regions, or, what I often call my “man area.”  As far as having a woman reach forth and have a fondle of my general penis and ball area and general crotch region, this was not, shall we say, my first rodeo.  However, I must concede, that this was the first time this had happened in my car, with someone whom I’d just moments prior met, and whose name I did not know, while I was sober and the car was moving.  New territory, indeed. 

                I don’t remember exactly what I said, but the sounds that came out of my mouth were something along the lines of this, “Wha. . . uh. . .wha. . . huh. . .why?

                Completely disregarding what was clearly a question, my pajama clad passenger and fellow community member said, “I owe my roommate some money, and I can do lots of sex stuff for forty dollars.  I’m really good at it.”

                “Wha, uh, what was that?” I managed to say, continuing my sentiment that had been, moments prior, stifled in apoplexy.

                “What’s wrong with you?” She asked.

                “You just felt my crotch,” I said, beginning to pull myself together after the violation.

                “I had to make sure you weren’t the police,” she said.  “You can’t do that to a cop.”

                For that moment, I believed her.  However, I have since seen through what seemed to be her ironclad logic.  One can do that to a cop.  The difference is that a cop might not be as caught off guard, leading him to play along, which would ultimately lead to the arrest of the young lady for, dare I say, the prostitution.   But I wasn’t that clear-headed.

                “What?”

                “Look, I just need money to pay my roommate,” she said.  “I promise I’m good at it.”

                I must admit, as a sales pitch, this approach was fucking brilliant.  I have no idea if she actually thought that a cop had to say, ”No, you cannot feel my genital region, for I am an officer of the law,” when she reached over and asked, “Do you mind?”  But I’m sure that many a man had, indeed, responded to her touch, getting the wheels turning and the thinking coming from the non-brain head.  I will admit that similar touches, in more tender and loving situations, of course, had, in the past, yielded such an interest from me.  However, I, as I’ve noted, am a gentleman and such random groping of my, ahem, “penis and balls” resulted in no such tumescence.   The only, shall we say, stiffening was in my spine.  So, mustering all the gentlemanliness in my being, I told her, “Look, I just left my girlfriend, and now I have to go to work.  I can still drop you off by Franklin Tower.”

                “Please,” she said.  “I really need the money, and I’m really good at it.”

                Therein we find the dilemma.  Do I forsake my commitment to monogamy, to being reasonably on time for work, and to the rule of law in order to help out a fellow citizen in such dire circumstances?  I mean, I could still be reasonably on time for work.  But then there’s that girlfriend, not to mention the moral and legal problem of paying cash money for sex stuff, no matter how good this young lady was at it.  What if I became addicted to how good it was?  There were a number of issues at play.  And sure, forty bucks isn’t exactly top dollar.  Would that even count?  I decided that it would. 

                “Yeah, I’m sorry.  I can’t.”

                “Please, I promise I’m really good at it.”

                “I can’t.”

                “Bring me back,” she said.

                “What?

                “Just bring me back.”

                “You don’t need a ride?” I asked, still having a difficult time wrapping my mind around all this.  I mean, a prostitute and a liar?  What kind of person had I let in my car?  “I, uh,” continued as I made a very illegal U-turn, partly going the wrong way down a one-way street, to bring her back.

                “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

                I didn’t know what to say.  I hadn’t even begun to process the fact that she was a liar because I was still unable to process the concept of the whole groping my business area thing.  “I’m just flustered, I guess.”

                “What? Why?”

                Her groping of my tender bits had been such an affront to my gentlemanliness.  That’s all I could think about and all I could say.  “You grabbed my stuff.”

                “Ugh,” she blurted in disgust.  “Just let me out here.”

                I did, still a few blocks from where I’d picked her up, and then I made my way home and to work, not knowing that I’d never be the same, trusting soul I once was again.

                I debated whether or not to tell Tamra about my experience, unsure of how my story of picking up a prostitute right after I left her place might go over.  I decided to tell her.

                “Oh, that’s Pajama Girl,” she said.

                “Pajama Girl?” I asked.  Holy shit!  I thought.  She’s a super hero.  A sex stuff super hero with rock-bottom pricing!  And I had forty bucks to blow!

                “Yeah,” Tamra replied.  “I’ve seen her in the neighborhood, always wearing pajama bottoms.”  She also told me how she’d seen the person who she thought was Pajama Girl’s pimp and how he had someone over by Franklin Tower who kept an eye on her.  She told me she knew someone who knew someone who knew all this.   The second someone said that he took a ridiculous percentage of her sex stuff fees, giving her a mere pittance and some drugs in return for his protection.  Hey, people know people who know stuff, man.

                As for me, I’ve since broken up with Tamra and moved from Portland, so I probably won’t ever run into Pajama Girl again.  I’m just left with what will one day be an uncontrollable urge to go up to a young woman dressed in pajama bottoms and a hoodie in Walmart and say to her, “Really?” I’ll say.  “Really?  You get all dressed up like a prostitute to go to Walmart?  Really?”

Ted and Über Ted

                I know what you’re thinking.  What’s the difference?  Seriously!  Well, quite a bit, actually, or not so much, depending on which point in my life we’re talking about.  Hell, it can depend on my mood at any given time of day.

                But wait.  Before I go on, let me say up front that I’m writing about my mental problems.  I have them.  I experience very serious depressive episodes.  In years past, I’ve contemplated suicide.  I’ve ruled that out because I’ve been to too many funerals for young people, especially in my family.  I wouldn’t want to put my parents through the loss of another child, nor my siblings through the loss of another brother.  Having lost a niece to suicide, I wouldn’t want to put my kids and grandkids through that.  I’m stuck with this, at times, miserable existence that I sometimes hate.  I may as well try to pull my head out of my proverbially depressed ass. 

                And as I type out my hand-written words—that’s just how I can get the flow as a writer—I recognize the depth of the sadness of relying on not wanting to put my family through pain for my suicide prevention plan.  It’s not the best plan, and right now, it’s not the plan.  I’m in a better place emotionally now, and I haven’t really considered suicide in years.  When I did, though, thinking about the pain it would put my family through kept me alive.  So there, it worked. 

                Anyway, back to the question of the day.  What the fuck is this “Über Ted” bullshit I’m talking about?  I’m getting to that, so back off, and let me tell the story.

                Yes, I have what I affectionately refer to as “mental problems.”  I have a diagnosis of major depression.  I’ve been on medication since 2009 and off and on since 2000.  First, for many years I didn’t want to be really honest about it, partly because I was worried about how it would affect my eligibility for continued service in the army reserve.  Not long after I went on medication the last

The Face of "mental problems."

time, I felt the need to be a role model about my mental illness in my reserve unit.  I was honest about it when we had suicide prevention training, and I was honest about it during my annual health assessments.    I made quite a bit of progress with the therapist I was seeing at that time, as well.  Second, I just didn’t want to be honest about it.  I felt that my depression was a weakness, and I hated acknowledging it.  But the biggest reason I didn’t want to be honest about it is that I just didn’t want to be honest about how my mental problems were contributing to the downfall of my marriage and leading me to set a horrible example for my kids of how a man should be when in a relationship with a woman.

                For my part, I’ve made peace with those things.  I took a long hard look at myself in therapy and in life.  I was fully honest with a therapist for the first time.  Now, I’m not going to talk about my marriage in this piece.  This isn’t about that, and, for Christ’s sake, it’s been over five years.  I’ve stopped discussing my marriage with people. In the past people had a hard time with me accepting what is a fully accurate assessment of my responsibility.  Everyone, understandably, thinks I’m so fucking awesome that there’s no way that I just wasn’t a good husband to her and for her.  But that’s just how it was, and that’s as far as that goes.

                I know.  Get to the point, already.  What, the Hell, is my problem, and what, the fuck, is this Über Ted?   Quite simply, my problem is escapism.  My problem is the Über Ted.

                Ah, yes, the Über Ted, my idealized self.  For, oh, 35-ish years, I’ve held an idealized image in my mind of what I would like my life to be.   I know, lame, but there’s more.   I’ve compared Reg’lar Ted to the Über Ted throughout my life, always unfavorably, of course, and always at the expense of whatever semblance of self-esteem I may have been struggling with at the time.

                  I know.  I’m sure lots of people do that.  I’m sure just about everyone has, at one time or another, daydreamed about a better life, a better self, a better dream for a better future, better this and better that.  I’m not really talking about that.  I’m talking about living vicariously through the Über Ted.  This may seem odd because I’m sure there are many who live vicariously through Reg’lar Ted, which is probably a very normal response.  I mean, I am pretty fucking awesome. 

                Through therapy, I’ve done an enormous amount of self-esteem work.  I may have even, shall we say, “overshot the mark,” because I’m pretty much in love with myself, and who can blame me?  While out on the town recently, I told an adorable young lesbian couple that they were the second cutest couple in the bar, after me and myself.  I meant it, and they're pretty adorable.

                So, me, as a man, I’m cool with the self-esteem thing.  Now.  But I’m sure I’m confusing you.  You’re probably thinking, “Get to the Über Ted bullshit, Ted.”  I’m getting to it.  Keep your panties on.

                It began when I was a young pubescent-ish lad, and I started noticing how I was fitting in with others.  It wasn’t a great fit.   Somewhere in the time between fourth and sixth grades, I discovered my profound lack of athletic ability.  I also started noticing how my family couldn’t afford some of the things that other families could.  My first memory of this was when my parents bought a 1966-or-so Impala convertible.  In 1981 or 1982 or whenever it was, such a car would have been a sweet-ass ride for a high school student, and I sort of remember that my mom really liked it.  But what I more clearly remember is the look of judgment and sarcasm on Kerry Myatt’s face when she said, “Nice car, Teddy,” after my mom dropped me off for school one day.  That’s such a vivid memory for me.  The only thing I don’t remember is how to spell Kerry’s last name.  She may have also spelled “Kerry” differently.  I don’t know.

                One might think that I’d spare my own children such embarrassment, but no.  I didn’t.  For a while I was driving a white 1989 Plymouth Voyager minivan that had wood panel sides.  I affectionately called it the “Family Truckster.”  The kids, not so affectionately, called it the “Family Dumpster.”  Once, when I was bringing my two older girls, Krystal and Kasi, to a dance at the YMCA, they begged of me not to drop them off in front of the Y, which was in a little strip-mall plaza near our home.  I dropped them off by the video store nearby, and then I crept up on them and shouted, “Have fun girls!” right in front of the YMCA.  My exhaust leak echoed through the parking lot as I sped away.   Krystal and Kasi, I understand and acknowledge the pain my actions have caused you.  I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.  Funny trumps regret.

                Alright, back to me.  There I was, nigh on pubescence, un-athletic, average, middle class, and I was noticing how girls didn’t swoon over me.  I know, crazy, right!  But don’t shed a tear for young Teddy Perrin.  He grew up to overcome all that shit.  Well, except for the athletic ability thing.  That never happened for me.   “Did God hate me?” is what I would have wondered if my family had been religious.  Thankfully, young Teddy did not have that weighing over him.  Thanks Mom and Dad!

                No, I’m just a simple American, and I was just a simple American boy.  I’m all about being part of the solution and not part of the problem.   So, I thought to myself, “Why can’t things just be different?”  Brilliant, I know.  In retrospect, I actually wanted things to have been different, but the former had started to work for me.  I began to daydream about a life that was different, and that, unfortunately, was as far as the plan went.  I’m sure lots of people daydream like this, and back then, it wasn’t a problem. 

The Rock 'n Roll Perrins, 35 years later.

                Hell, back then, my daydreams were hilarious.  At first, preteen Ted wished he was in some kind of rock star family—not unlike the Partridges.  No, very much unlike the Partridges.  The Perrins rocked, hard.  And this new, imaginary Ted was the smartest and most athletic kid in school.  Naturally, he had his choice of sweethearts.  It’s hard to imagine how that earliest version of the Über Ted would have played out because, in the coming years, the Über Ted was, for lack of a better explanation, a little more grounded in whatever plans I had in reality. 

                And as I became a teenager, and I became somewhat more comfortable with myself—somewhat—the Über Ted became a little less grandiose.  Well, now that I think of it, just as grandiose.  I just didn’t dream of being in a rock star family, anymore.  I settled for my regular one.  Naturally, the Über Ted was still the smartest kid around, and he was never, ever awkward or uncomfortable with girls.  He didn’t peak at five-foot-nine, either, nor did he have acne or my crowded teeth.  Oh, and he was the best long distance runner in the state.  Ah, but I’m being modest, the Über Ted was the best long distance runner in the country, destined for Olympic glory.  Of course, by “Olympic glory,” I mean “all the gold medals.”

Teenage Ted, Dreamer of
big, big dreams.

                In later years, if I thought about the Über Ted and his past, I softened the whole “all the gold medals” thing.   Silver and bronze medals build character in your first couple Olympiads.   Oh, and by “if I thought about the Über Ted,” I mean that I did that shit all the fucking time.

                As my high school years were ending, I was subconsciously sabotaging my college plans.  I had been recruited by the cross country coach at Columbia University, so I applied there and to Cornell, with Ohio State as my safety school.  But I had no clue what I really wanted to do, and I felt completely lost as I navigated the application process.  Going to an Ivy League school was a bit too much pressure for a young man who felt like he was the biggest, most awkward dumbshit in four counties.  So, I blew off the College Board Achievement Tests—a requirement for both Columbia and Cornell at the time—and I wrote, uh, scribbled, actually, an absolutely atrocious essay on my applications.  I can’t remember what it was about.  I just know it was very far from the best expository composition in my life. 

                After that, I settled on joining the army reserve and going to Ohio State and screwing that up by never going to class.  This led to me joining the regular army.  The Über Ted didn’t join me in uniform right away.  He was busy kicking ass at Columbia University, in the classroom and on the championship cross country team.  He learned so much cool shit and impressed the bejeezus out of all those cute Ivy League chicks.  They were so damned lucky!

                Oddly enough, I began to recognize that some parts of my life weren’t so bad.  It’s been hard for me to wrap my mind around that sometimes because in those years, I often felt that my very existence was so utterly horrible and pathetic, but I realized that joining the regular army wasn’t so bad, so the Über Ted signed up.  Or, he had signed up, rather.  Only he had realized as a senior in high school how he had no clue about what he wanted to do with his life.  He just joined the regular army out of high school and didn’t need to waste a year with a non-term at Ohio State and staying with friends, like I had, before I realized that I just needed to do something.

                No, the Über Ted joined the regular army, and our timelines met after his tour of duty in Korea as we started our service at Ft. Riley, Kansas.  I was doing double duty, actually serving in the real world and vicariously serving as the Über Ted.  I know.  That seems like a lot, but apparently, I’m a much better multitasker than I present as in the real world, you know, to people.

                Let me be clear.  I wasn’t constantly thinking about how sucky I was and how much better my life would be if I were the Über Ted and perfect.  I thought about it a lot, though, in my quiet moments, alone, when I felt rejected, when I felt foolish, when I felt dumb, when I felt hideous.  Very often, indeed, but not constantly.  Simple self-confidence would have gone a long way for that young Ted, but for that Ted, self-confidence was as foreign as could be.  It was such an abstract unreality when compared with the self-image I had.  The Über Ted had a better chance of becoming Real Ted than that Ted had of feeling worth a good God damn.

                Okay, now.  Put your tissues away.  This was just something I experienced.  It was all in my head, anyway.  I’ve had a good life.  I served well and honorably during my regular army years, and so did the Über Ted.

                Then, we went to college.  I went to the University of Maine to major in English.  The Über Ted made it past the wait-list at Bates College, where he matriculated to become a man of letters.  When I realized and accepted that UMaine wasn’t such a shithole, the Über Ted joined me there.  I did pretty well.  Indeed, it was difficult to convince myself that I was a fucking moron while I was performing so well academically and earning such a variety of honors.  I accepted that Phi Beta Kappans are at least book smart, but I was sure that I was the stupidest one of them.

                I did have an experience at UMaine that was rather emotionally traumatic.  I read James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for the survey of American Literature, and it was horrifying.  If you haven’t read it—and I haven’t read it in around 17 years—let me summarize.  In the story, Walter Mitty is a fucking loser, idiot who daydreams through his mundane life with grand and heroic thoughts of a different life.   I hated reading it and seeing how foolish and escapist living vicariously though daydreams was.  On a critical note, as a daydream escapist, I thought that Thurber didn’t capture this phenomenon very well.  Mitty’s daydreams were far too disconnected to be taken seriously.  It would be more believable if there had been even a little bit of exposition along the parallel narrative of Mitty’s daydreams.

                And you know, I’ve thought about writing this as a longer piece, focusing on the parallel between the Über Ted and Walter Mitty.   The working title is Suck it, Walter Mitty.

                Did I participate in the classroom discussion of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? Quite simply, fuck no.  I wasn’t quite ready to share my own secret Über Ted life with the world.  Also, my professor didn’t help me feel that the classroom, or anywhere else, might be a safe place to discuss the Über Ted, either.  I don’t remember his exact words, but this is what his discussion of the story felt like, “Walter Mitty is the biggest fucking loser moron in literary history, ever.  While it may be hilarious on the page, any people who actually do this and think these sort of thoughts not only do not deserve to breath the same air as us normal people, but they will also get a ‘C’ in this class.”  Then, he looked in the eyes of every student in class that day to see who might be harboring such dumbfuck escapist thoughts.  Somehow, I hid my true self, and I kept my “A.”

                At this point, having realized that living vicariously through my idealized self was not a healthy or effective use of my brain power, I decided to stop.  But having developed this as a coping mechanism for dealing with my self-loathing over what had been over 15 years by then, I couldn’t stop. Or, rather, I just didn’t know how to stop.  There was no way I was going to talk to someone about it, either.

                I just kept living and accepting things about me and letting the Über Ted integrate them into his story, too.  I met the woman who is now my ex-wife, Kathy, and her kids, and we became a family.  I helped her raise those kids, and I love them.  I’ll always be there for them, and their children.  The Über Ted was along for this ride, too.  We were pretty integrated, except for me hating myself and wanting to be a different, smarter, better looking guy and a better husband and parent.  I just wanted to be Über Ted, but living my life.

                I had graduated, and I was working outside my field, but I was working.  I loved my wife and kids, and I was happy with them.  But I was miserable in me.  I hated that I couldn’t stop hating myself, and I just wanted it to stop.  Daydreaming about the Über Ted was replaced by me constantly talking to myself about what a worthless, piece of shit, fucking moron I was.  I had invested hope in waking up to be the Über Ted, and that felt like the stupidest thing anyone had ever done.  “Miserable” doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.  Then again, it’s a very simple way to describe how I felt, and I think that many of you can relate to it as the introduction of the description of my old feelings of worthlessness.  Anyway, Kathy could see that I wasn’t right, and she pushed me to get help.  Ultimately, she had to call the police one night when I was beset with desperation, and I took a Leatherman-like hand tool off to the nearest bit of forest to do myself in.  A policeman caught up with me on the trail, and he brought me to the emergency room.

                When I left the house, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do.  Jam one of the blades into my neck or temple or chest, I guess.  I didn’t have a fully formed plan.  As many who are close to me will attest, I’m not good at planning anything.

It may have been in the ER that night with Kathy and the crisis worker, it may have been during the follow-up appointment with a psychiatrist, it may have been in my first appointment with a therapist, or it could have just been in a conversation with Kathy, but I started telling some of these select few about the Über Ted.  It wasn’t all that liberating.  As one prone to self-criticism and a tendency for perfectionism, it felt like defeat.  I felt like the King of the Dipshits.  I was worse than that dumbfuck Walter Mitty because people knew.  I mean, at least the Über Ted had some direction, unlike that piece-of-shit Mitty’s day dream self.

Part of me wants to reread the story, but most of me doesn’t.  I just watched the trailer to Ben Stiller’s 2013 version of the film, and I wanted to cry.  Fuck Walter Mitty.

I did feel exposed, but through the cavalcade of therapists over the next few years, I had the opportunity to make some progress.  I also had the assurances of a board-certified psychiatrist that because I knew that this Über Ted stuff wasn’t real, I wasn’t insane.  So, I had that going for me.  And I was able to process through some of the bullshit that had made me a miserable, depressed, pathetic daydreaming loser.  I was able to achieve a level of self-acceptance that I had theretofore never reached.  Unfortunately, I never really worked through the Über Ted bullshit, and I just accepted that as part of “being Ted.”  I made myself suppress the desire to be the Über Ted.  It wasn’t that hard.  Sure, he snuck back in every once in a while, mostly around my discomfort with my physical appearance.  The Über Ted was taller, a little more muscular, more handsome, and he had a full head of hair and could grow a full beard.  A full head of hair and a full beard, for Christ’s sake, is that so much to ask for from a man’s deranged fantasy of becoming his idealized self?  I thought not.  But, whatever.  I’d catch myself thinking about the Über Ted, and I’d just say, “Cut the shit, Ted.”

It seemed to work for a while, at least until I started going through the separation and divorce with Kathy when I fell into a pretty deep depression.  I was fully honest with my therapist and with myself—for the first time—about my part in the downfall in the marriage.   For a while, all this honesty with myself kept Über Ted away.  It was kind of weird for him not to have his fingerprints all over a period of serious depression.   I’m not going to go so far as to say it was nice.  I hated the man I’d let myself become.  This period of depression was just different. 

But don’t get me wrong.  The Über Ted was still lurking around.  He was changing, along

Visitors to TedHouse enjoy this
picture on my hand made
bedside table.  So hot!

with my self-image.  I was beginning to accept what a magnificent specimen of manhood, intelligence, creativity, and awesomeness I am.   And I had begun to see just how God-damned good-looking I am.  I mean, seriously, look at me.

But the Über Ted isn’t just a pretty face with a great mind and an amazing ass.  He’s always been a man who did things, and for a while, Reg’lar Ted was, too.  I had started TedBlog, and I made TedBar and some other furniture.  I got interested in cooking and in creative cocktails.  I made foolish videos for the YouTubes.   I was doing creative things, and I loved it. 

Then I got busy with “busy-ness,” and I stopped making time for the things that I enjoyed.  I had to do a lot of overtime at work, and that ate away at me.  My free time became less of a time to create cool shit and more of a time to rest and sleep away the stress.  And, in the interest of full disclosure, I drank some of that time away, but I did create a few of my own cocktail recipes.  So, really, I was still pretty creative. 

I bought a house 50 miles closer to work, hoping the ten hours per week that I was no longer spending on the commute would be spent getting the rest I needed to be creative during my “TedTime.”    Anyway, I love TedHouse, and I’ve loved the process of decorating it and making some of the furniture, like the desk I’m writing on now. 

But the time to be creative slipped away from my grasp, and I was falling.  This happens.   I have a mental illness, and I’m prone to depressive episodes.  My old psychiatrist once told me that 100 percent of people who experience three or more major depressive episodes will experience another.   She was right, in my case, many times over. 

So, I was falling.  Like I said, this happens.  After the Newtown shooting, I was devastated.   I hated everything, myself included.  I walked through a fog for a couple weeks.  I was just shocked and saddened that mental illness didn’t become the important talking point.  I was consumed with what I call my “I hate everything feeling.”  Then, in my nephew’s basement, where I had been doing my woodworking, I made a cut, and as his saw tore into the pine, I felt my mood lift.  I didn’t hate everything anymore.  This happens, too—usually not quite so dramatically.  It happens, though, and I like stuff again. 

This liking stuff again just wasn’t happening last fall.  (Full disclosure, it’s not there all the time now.)  But last fall, I mean, I really hated everything, more each day.  There was a confluence of things that probably all fed into this to varying degrees.  I had written a novel years ago, only a draft, and it was still a raging piece of shit that needed a lot of work.  I lost the soft copy of it.  I still have the hard copy, but losing it just reminded me of what a lazy, non-novel-editing motherfucker I’d been for so long.  The Über Ted would have finished that shit.  I also had the anniversaries of the two big break-ups of my life to consider and reflect on the changes I’d made—along with the changes I felt were still necessary.  I’d had another break-up a few months prior, and I had to think about why I'd let that go as far as I had.  And there were other things, but this is enough disclosure for now.

And the days grew shorter, and I hated everything, including myself, naturally.  And my old friend came back to haunt me.

Since October 2014, I’ve missed a lot of work, many days, just lying in bed or on my couch, hating every fucking moment, wishing for the Über Ted to just take over.  The time was ripe.  He edited and finished his damn novels—and sold them and had them made into movies, of course.  He wrote regularly and did lots of cool, creative stuff.  Yeah, sure, he had his share of problems.  He’s human, just like you and me, but he took care of himself.  He dealt with his shit like a normal person.

And me, I just wallowed in misery, unable to understand how this could or would stop.  There were no magic moments when my mood just changed, and it never seemed to change gradually.  The Über Ted didn’t seem like he was ever going to take over—that worthless son of a bitch.  So I decided to give it up.   This Über Ted bullshit just didn’t work for me, and I found a therapist.  We’re working on getting my head out of my ass and into my life.  She says that we’re working on getting me out of my head and into my life.  Fuck it, I’m paying for this shit, so I call it whatever I want.  As long as the result is me engaging my life rather than some bullshit idealized self, it doesn’t matter what language we use. 

I have to admit, though, It’s not very easy to give up living vicariously through the Über Ted after 35 years.  A great deal of the time, I just don’t know what to do with myself or what to think.  I still have days when I don’t feel like I have enough energy to get out of bed.  It’s so easy to go through the motions of life with hope for the Über Ted at the back of my mind. There are times when it’s a hell of a lot harder to just go through the motions of my life.   I had no idea how deep all of this ran, and sometimes, I don’t know what to hope for or what a regular future might be like.  It still gets pretty dark every once in a while.

But I’m slowly making changes.  I’ve been doing some writing.  (You’re reading this, aren’t you?)  Indeed, writing this is going to help immensely, I hope.  How can I go back to the Über Ted if I’ve exposed him for the fraud he is?  I’m even starting to rewrite that piece-of-shit, unreadable novel. (Keep your pants on, it’ll take a while.)  I recently completed another woodworking project—this awesome desk I’m using right now—and I’ve got another one in the hopper, bunk beds for my grandkids.  Well, there are a few in the hopper, end-tables and shelves and whatever I may feel like.

Sometimes, I just don’t know what I’m doing.  I catch myself heading to fantasyland.  Not as the Über Ted, but I fantasize about being Reg’lar Ted with all the work done that I need to do.  That’s pretty dangerous for me right now, too.  It’s just another side of the Über Ted coin where I don’t have to do any work for things to get better.  I try not to beat myself up much.  That’s been pretty disastrous in the past.  And after all, this Über Ted stuff is kind of funny.   What an elaborate procrastination scheme!  It’s much better than “planning ahead so I don’t have to do anything right now.”  I don’t even have to plan ahead because my idealized self would have already done it, and much, much more.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to write about this in more detail, with fewer “fucks” and “shits.”  Though, to be sure, I’ll never tell all.  I’m telling enough, and all this feels pretty stupid.  No one needs to know all the inner-workings of this big ol’ brain of mine.  For now, I’m just trying to do some shit and, honestly, to give a shit.  It’s just going to take some time.

My Trips to New Jersey: A Series of Tedventures

So, New Jersey, why the Hell would Ted want to go there, anyway?  Indeed, why would anyone?  Well, Mr. or Ms. Superior, my Dad lives there.  Well, here.  I’m typing this in New Jersey at my Dad’s place.  I drove down to visit him over a long weekend.  I’m seriously considering flying next time because it was a pain in the ass to get here.  It always is, for me.

He lives in Ocean County.  It’s the retirement community capital of the United States, according to my Dad after chatting with me over some Scotch.  Anyway, he used to live in Maine, and I settled in Maine after I got out of the regular army, partly to go to the University of Maine, partly to live closer to him.  Then, soon after I graduated from UMaine, he and my step-mom Janet moved to Nueva Joisey.  They have a condo in a nice, little, politically challenged—perhaps another post someday—retirement community.  I’ve driven here four times, and I’ve never made it here in a reasonable amount of time.

Once, I almost went to Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Yes, I almost completely overshot New Jersey.  Apparently, Janet left a 6 or an 8 off one of the routes when she was giving me directions.  Once I drove from Baltimore, where I was participating in centralized training for the VA. The trip wasn’t that long, but leaving Baltimore at about 5:30, and hitting traffic in Philadelphia, I got to my dad’s about an hour or so after stupid Yahoo Maps indicated I would.  Whatever.  The last time I drove down with my daughter, Amber, for Dad’s 80^th birthday celebration.  Apparently, as I found out later, the Connecticut State Police had to shoot someone in the northbound lanes of Interstate 84.  All four northbound lanes were closed, and there was only one southbound lane open.  It was a holiday weekend.  Amber and I got off the highway to eat, but it didn’t make any difference.  What should have been an eight-or-nine-hour drive took about twelve hours.  If only I’d had a GPS to warn me about the traffic!

That’s why I thought this trip would be different.  I have a handy-dandy GPS, and as I approached Hartford, Connecticut it foretold of the impending jamming around Hartford and beyond.  Would I like to save time, avoid the traffic, and only add about ten minutes to the ETA?  You bet your sweet ass I would.  So there I was, barreling down the Merrit Parkway or whatever the hell it was.  I’m not sure. Part of the convenience of using a GPS is that I don’t have to pay attention to what road I’m on.  All I have to do is not hit the cars in front of me and follow directions.  Anyway, the rest of Connecticut was fine, but when I got to New York, the trip got pretty interesting. 

After a couple more accepted offers of time-saving, traffic-avoiding bypasses, I was getting off the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan and driving down Broadway to get to the George Washington Bridge.  In my GPS’ defense, the traffic on Broadway actually moved.  The few miles from the bridge to the first toll gate on the New Jersey turnpike took a few hours.  The last mile took nearly two. 

But it wasn’t all bad, though.  I listened to some music.  I exchanged friendly, knowing expressions with my fellow traffic hostages.  I was a positive force for good, sending out pleasant vibes that said, “We can get through this, together!”  That’s probably the only reason there weren’t any road rage fatalities that I could see.  While sitting in my car, I could also see the Manhattan skyline, and I didn’t have to worry about watching the road because I wasn’t moving.  I think I saw about 10 floors completed on the new World Trade Center.  America! Fuck yeah!

But it was pretty bad, though.  My fuel light came on with about 300 yards and 25 minutes to go before the toll gates.  This is when I started to feel stressed.  There wasn’t anything I could do about the traffic.  I was going to get through it, and it was going to take a long time.  Why worry about that.  There wasn’t anything I could do about the gas situation.  I didn’t know if I could make it to a gas station in time.  I had no idea how roadside assistance could get to me with a couple gallons of gas.  I didn’t want to have the collective honks of all of Northern New Jersey haunting me forever.  All I knew was that there was gas .6 miles away, beyond the toll gates.  That was .6 miles that I might not make.  That is one handy GPS feature, and that was one magnificent sigh of relief when I made it to the service plaza and the gas pumps.

It was pretty hot for October, too, 80 degrees according to my dashboard thermometer.  Well, it was much hotter than I’ve been used to at this time of year since I’ve lived in Maine.  Perhaps it felt so hot because I had to have the heat on.  Now, the mechanics of it are beyond my comprehension, but whenever I’m in long-term stop-start traffic like this, my engine revs really high, 5,000 RPM’s high, while idling.  The engine temperature gauge reads normally, but cranking the heater to pull heat off the engine works, and the tachometer goes back below 1,000.  I opened the windows, so there was a nice breeze, well, a breeze.  While the windows were down, a carful of college-aged kids asked me if there were any cash only lanes ahead.  We could clearly see the flashing lights on the EZ-Pass lanes, but there was nothing marking the cash lanes.  “I hope so,” I said, and we all had a good laugh.

There weren’t.  Well, there were, but I was on the far left.  By the time I realized that I would have to merge right just to get through one of the toll gates, it was a struggle, and the truck beside me kept so close behind the next car that I had a difficult time making it that one lane over, let alone the four lanes to the next gate where I could get a toll ticket.  “What is happening?” I thought. “Are they just letting people go because they don’t want to hold this bullshit up anymore?”

Ah, sweet innocence.  They weren’t.  When I got to the actual toll booth, the guy asked for my ticket.  He also explained how you drive through the toll gates, and there’s this machine on the side.  It spits out tickets.  Then you give the ticket to the guy at the next plaza, and he’ll tell you how much you have to pay for the toll.  It was $11.80 without the ticket.  I didn’t get mad at the guy.  He’s just doing his job, and I’m too laid-back to get pissy with someone over something stupid. I did, however, yell, “Suck it!” at the people who were honking at me during my little chat with the toll guy.  I thanked him, wished him a good night, and I was finally on my way.

I got to my dad’s very late, 9:30, well past his bed time, but Janet had some soup to warm up for me.  Dad and I caught up over the last of his Scotch.  As always, just the time to catch up with Dad was well worth the trip.

And now, I’m getting ready to order an EZ-Pass electronic tag.

My Mountaineer Friends and I Take on Mt. St. Helens

The view of Mt. St. Helens as we set out on foot.

Although I don’t have the best memory of all events from my childhood, I distinctly remember not being a fan of volcanoes when I was a little kid.  I remember a book about volcanoes that my brother, Danny, brought home from school.  I don’t know if I was able to read it at the time, but I do remember the images of houses buried to the edge of the roof in the book.  How horrifying!  We lived in a three-story house.  That, my friends, is a shitload of lava.  Screw that.  I didn’t want any part of it.  Now, fast forward to the spring of 1980 and to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.  I was a little older, and I’d probably learned that there weren’t any active volcanoes in Maine. I’m sure that I’d learned enough about geography to know how far away Washington was.  I just remember watching the news stories and seeing smoke and ash billowing from the mountain. As a ten-year-old, I made no immediate plans to go visit Mt. St. Helens, and I never thought I’d be hiking to that crater as an adult.

Skip ahead to my recent army reserve annual training trip to Ft. Lewis, Washington when some friends and I took one of our days off to go climb Mt. St. Helens.  A few days earlier we’d climbed to 10,000 feet on Mt. Rainier, and we wanted to conquer another mountain while we were out there. Unfortunately, there are only a hundred permits to climb above 4,800 feet each day, and it’s all booked through September.  So we packed our new gaiters, some food and water, and some extra socks and stuff, and we went to the Johnston Ridge Observatory north of St. Helens across the South Fork Toutle River Valley, hoping that someone might have blown off their reservation.

Of course, this was a really dumb plan.  To climb the mountain to the top of the crater, we should have gone to the South Side, you know, where the climbing routes are.  My friend, Bruce, and I may have actually made use of the gaiters we bought at the Tacoma REI the night before. There is snow up there.  We had decided to gear up, not wanting to risk climbing another mountain on balls alone.  The guy at REI was really helpful.  A friend of his had climbed St. Helens a few days before, and he advised us on gear we might need for the current conditions.  He said that gaiters might be a good idea, and that for the love of God, we should get some moisture-wicking clothes, man.  I had some decent hiking shoes and socks, so I just bought the gaiters and a moisture-wicking T-shirt.  Oh, and not wanting to tempt fate with snow-blindness again, I got some sun-glasses.  And I bought a pocket knife.  I didn’t need a pocket knife, but I found one like the one I’d lost two years ago.  It has a cool carabiner/bottle opener thing.  I couldn’t afford not to get it.

Check it out, this T-shirt just
wicks moisture away from me.

Also, when I said that we set off for the Johnston Ridge Observatory and implied that there was some sort of planning involved in this, that was bullshit, too.  We kind of headed south on Interstate 5 looking for the “Mt. St. Helens Climbing Routes” exit.  Using the GPS for the “Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center” was somewhat helpful.  So were the directions we got, three times, one set of them from people at a Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center.

So, there we were, ready to climb Mt. St. Helens.  The Forest Service lady, Peg, suggested that we go to some bullshit-ass viewpoint place, about a five-mile hike from Johnston Ridge, because the view is nice there.  Thanks, Peg.  But, we explained to her that we’re mountaineers, and we wanted to go there, pointing to the mountain.  She suggested that we go to the Loowit Falls Trail, about a seven-mile hike from Johnston Ridge.  (We learned that the trail was about seven miles away and the falls are about eight.)  While at first there was a bit of “hey-it’s-two-o’clock-and-it-took-two-hours-to-get-here-do-we-really-want-to-set-out-on-such-a-long-hike,” we decided, “Fuck it.  We’re mountaineers, man.”  A little while later, we saw our last fellow human for about five hours.

  Of course pointing out that we saw our last fellow human for about five hours is kind of dumb.  I mean, people do that all the time.  Five hours is nuthin’.  Our solitude—if four people can have solitude—was just amplified by the desolation of the valley.  That volcano blew the living hell out of everything there.  Everything. 

It would have made a perfect location for NASA to stage the moon landing in 1969. Yeah, perfect.  Then they let it sit there for 11 years, making up this whole “volcano” thing to ‘splain why there was absolutely nuthin’ there.  But I’ll stop with the bullshit conspiracies.  I’ll tackle these and others on another day.  I’ll explain why the Constitution isn’t real.  It was written by Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston and paid for by a grant from the NRA.  Maybe I’ll tell you all how the Berlin Wall was bullshit, too.  JFK, Raytheon, and Colt subsidized it to help keep the Cold War going after it started to peter out in the late 1950’s.

Perhaps I’m digressing.

Spirit Lake, from the mountain.

Anyway, one look at the valley on the crater side of Mt. St. Helens, and I couldn’t help but be awed by the unspeakable power of the earth.  There was a big-ass void in a mountain about the size of oh, I don’t know, a fucking cubic mile.  Then there was a valley with nothing.  Looking in the opposite direction from Johnston Ridge, mountains were covered with what used to be a forest, trees lying like scattered matchsticks all over the place.  Looking out toward the mountain and Spirit Lake, the lee side of spurs and ridges showed some green new growth, but the blast sides were still mostly barren, still healing from the eruption.  The view demonstrated how we, as a species, are, and will always be, at the mercy of the earth.

We had to hike along the boundary trail on the ridgeline, disturbingly at first, toward Spirit Lake, and not toward the mountain.  But as we hiked, I realized that this was all being preserved.  Nature was taking her time to restore, and the Forest Service, the US Geological Survey, probably some garden club from Yakima, and who knows who else was studying the progress of the restoration of this land, from the vast emptiness following the blast to whatever nature may bring in the years to come.  I probably wouldn’t have had to “realize” this if I’d just read a sign or placard thing or two along the way.  It’s not a secret.  I did read some signs that said something like “stay on trails and paved areas” and “$100 minimum fine.” Informative stuff.  Oh, and did you know that “plants grow by the inch and die by the foot.”  They do.  It’s our feet that kill them when we step on them.  Most of them don’t die as soon as they reach a foot tall.  Take trees, for example.  They get pretty tall.  Of course, this could be bullshit, too.  I don’t always bother to be well-informed. 

A thousand or so of the billions of caterpillars.

You know what nature had brought to that valley, though?  Caterpillars.  Shitloads of ‘em.  It’s caterpillar country out there.  But as we walked and observed, there were mosses and grasses growing.  There were flowers, too, pretty wildflowers, which I would have picked for my girlfriend, but I don’t think I could have picked $100-worth of them.  They probably would have died before I got them to her.

 But anyway, having only seen pictures, and most of those since the hike, it was hard to really grasp that the land where we stood was well forested before the eruption.  All we could see looked like the desert.  We saw Spirit Lake, but we didn’t know that the current lake was a few hundred feet higher than the previous one, now filled with ash and debris from the eruption. Even as we stood on the cliff of Loowit Canyon and took pictures of the falls, it didn’t fully dawn on me that this creek wasn’t there before 1980 and neither was the canyon.  It’s been carved out by erosion, and it continues to change.

For some reason, this view wouldn't suffice.

We foolishly climbed higher above the cliff to get better views.  I realized how stupid this was about halfway up.  We were on a pile of loose rocks that the aforementioned creek had cut through like butter about 30 feet from us, and we were over a cliff.  Loose rock climbing is a pretty dumb adventure sport.  I tried to mountain goat my way down, jumping from bigger rock to bigger rock on my way and hoping desperately that these bigger rocks were as stable as they looked.  But we had climbed higher for the view, always the view, and it was worth it.  I stood there late on that day as high as we would get on Mt. St. Helens even though there was so much higher to go.  I looked out and loved what I saw.  Nature, in an ironically pristine state, so much of it untouched just so we can watch it grow and learn from it.

We absolutely did not cut some distance out of the return trip
by heading toward the big rock.  Absolutely not.

This hike was different from our climb up Rainier.  On Rainier, I felt my body disagreeing with each step as we trekked higher, and it’s difficult not to be amazed by the alpine glory of Rainier and the surrounding mountains.  The view from St. Helens was different.  It’s not slap-you-in-the-face alpine glorious, and there wasn’t the thin air to intoxicate me and tell me how amazing and dangerous this was.  The view from the lower lip of the Mt. St. Helens crater is different.  It tells a story, a story of power and destruction, and of the long, slow, and glorious rebirth of the land.  It’s a story the earth has been telling forever, but we don’t always recognize it.  It’s a story that’s still being told to me as I follow the endless links about Mt. St. Helens.  Someday, I’ll go back, and the story will have changed, but next time, I’ll pay attention to that long, slow exposition of the earth’s narrative.  I can’t wait.

And when I do go, I’ll wear the moisture-wicking underdrawers that I just ordered with a Groupon.  Fifteen or so miles of hiking makes for significant chafing.

The Idiot’s Tale: Mount Rainier to 10,000 Feet

                I had joked on Facebook earlier in the day that if I didn’t make it back, please tell my kids and grandsons I love them.  I had joked with the others on the trip, “If I don’t make it, tell our story.  Tell it!”  But as we approached 10,000 feet, I had long since realized that this was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.  The air was thin.  The mere exertion of a few steps left us breathless.  We struggled to crest a slope that seemed as if it was beyond cresting.  I was genuinely afraid of any number of calamities befalling us, and I genuinely regretted the flippant tone of my Facebook post.  I was actively trying to suppress thoughts about the perils of our pending descent when there it was, Camp Muir, a base camp at just over 10,000 feet.

                Now the day had started innocently enough.  We were going to Mount Rainier, and we were going to do some hiking starting at the Paradise Visitor Center, which is about 5,400 feet above sea-level.  Last year, during my annual training visit to Fort Lewis, Washington, some friends and I had gone to Mount Rainier and walked around a little at Paradise, and then we stopped along the way down for some photo ops.  My friend, Nate, had gone last year later in the summer than I had, and he had done some hiking from Paradise.  A few of us decided that we wanted to do some hiking there as well.  Somewhere along the way, we decided to go for Muir, perhaps after a fair amount of oxygen deprivation.

Oxygen deprivation sets in.  I couldn't even line-up my buttons. How embarrassing.

                I know what you’re thinking, “Ted, you’re a bad-ass.  You’re in the army reserve for Pete’s sake.  You’re a damn soldier!”  And while all of this is true, none of it could really prepare me for such a hike.  I may be in the army reserve, but I’m less than a year from my planned retirement.  I do have to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test, but I have a bad back and a number of other chronic joint strains.  I haven’t been able to do the run in about two years because it leaves me with horrific back spasms for a week or so.  Now, I do a two-and-a-half-mile walk instead of a two-mile run.  I do a remarkably small amount of exercise, and I can’t do the sit-ups for the test anymore because the last time I started to ready myself for the test, I had to stop after four sit-ups.  Yes, four.  My back was killing me for the two weeks I was waiting for an appointment with my chiropractor.

                Can you imagine how awesome I would be if I weren’t such a broken-down, injury-plagued, old soldier?  Yeah, it blows my mind thinking about it, too.

                My friends, Jay and Bruce, who also made the climb, are in much better shape than I.  They actually work out and run and shit like that.  By the way, one of them had the idea to keep climbing.  It certainly wasn’t my idea.  I just wasn’t ready to quit.  I have this stupid thing I do sometimes where I don’t like to show weakness.  It doesn’t happen that often, of course.  I am—all will agree—pretty damn awesome.

                At some point after Panorama Point on the Skyline Trail, we kept climbing up.  Nate stayed behind with the less experienced climbers—even less experienced than us—but he planned to climb behind us and meet us along the way.  After Panorama we saw increasingly fewer casual hikers.  They all had this fancy gear and experience and shit like that.  As we left them in our wake, we all thought that some of these would have been a good idea, perhaps with some of these or these.  It would have been a good idea to have some of these, and one of these may have come in handy as well. And on the descent, I would have preferred to wear a pair of these as I slid down the Muir Snow Field on my ass.

                In retrospect, we realized that we passed so many people because we were too dumb to pace ourselves.  I’ve said before that no one ever accused me of not having half a brain.  Well, yesterday on Rainier, I was using the other half.

                No, we didn’t have any gear.  I was wearing my hiking shoes, shorts, a t-shirt, and a light button-down shirt, and I had a fleece jacket, my wind breaker, and a change of socks in my backpack, nary a stitch of Gore-Tex on my person.  Jay and Bruce were similarly equipped, although Bruce, being an experienced adventurer, had a North Face jacket.  I didn’t even have sunglasses, and my anxiety about snow blindness grew with each step after Nate pointed out that the conditions were ideal.  No, we had no gear.  Some may call it hubris.  Some may call it foolishness.  Me, I prefer to call it balls, and we were fully equipped with three sets of brass ones.

This is how mountaineers view the world.  Soak it in.

                And somewhere between 7,500 and 8,000, feet we really started to notice the lack of oxygen, but we climbed onward over the snow, trying to find paths where people had already climbed, so we could use their steps.  As we climbed, our steps grew shorter, baby-steps up the Muir Snow Field.  With each step my anxiety grew, and I started to feel that unfamiliar feeling that some of you may call surrender.  But the balls—or foolishness—in me stifled any chance to give voice to that feeling, and I hoped that Jay or Bruce would be the ones that decided we’d climbed high enough.

                Like I said, though, there it was, Camp Muir, close enough to give us a visual goal at the end of the seemingly crestless slope of the snow field.  We made it there, close enough to see the tents of the climbers with, you know, well-formed plans of ascent.  We approached to see the stone fortress of Camp Muir, and we said, “Fuck it.”  Smoked, beaten, and—at least for me—feeling the anxiety of the pending descent, we stopped and looked around.  With Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens in the distance, I don’t recall ever feeling so awed and humbled by the blend of the beautiful, the grand, and even the terrifying in the limitless vastness of nature. 

                Then, as we sat in the snow—Jay and Bruce on their army wet-weather coats, me on my soon-to-be-drenched LL Bean windbreaker—and changed our socks, I realized the full measure of torture that the descent could bring.  The impact of each step downward would compound the pressure on the stupid-ass bulging disc in my lumbar spine, inviting at least a few days’ worth of muscle spasms.  I reassured myself that I could probably get some Flexeril at an emergency room.  But no, as we had seen the experienced climbers slide down on their butts, we decided to try the same.  Often, a pile of snow would build up in front of us, making the descent slow.  Jay and Bruce quickly abandoned this method and pretty much ran down the snow field with gravity leading the way.  Me, I persevered, covering much of the snow field on my snow-drenched and frozen ass.

That's an ice-cold mountaineer's ass, soaking up some rays on the descent.

                After the snow field, the descent was quick, and each step was like sticking my foot in a bucket of ice water.  I made sure to identify us as the biggest idiots on the mountain that day.  Some people, not surprisingly, didn’t get it.  A couple people tried to argue their case, but I pointed out that they had, well, appropriate gear.  All we had were three sets of brass ones.  Case closed. 

                Back at Paradise, we quickly found Nate and the van.  I got in the back and stripped from the waist down.  I had nothing to change into.  I just covered my lap and my junk with my button-down shirt and let the feeling come back to my ass as we got close to the Fort Lewis gate.  On the van, someone read aloud from the Mount Rainier National Park brochure.  It said that climbing Mount Rainier is hazardous and that the three key elements to a climb are proper equipment, experience, and excellent physical conditioning.  I might suggest that they add serious balls to that list.

Three ill-equipped, albeit ballsy mountaineers.

                  Climbing to 10,000 feet on Mount Rainier is unquestionably the stupidest thing I have ever done.  I could continue to catalogue the mistakes we made and the perils involved.  Screw that.  Glory trumps regret.  I will not soon forget the feeling of success and relief, the joy of a heretofore unimaginable accomplishment, or the view from nearly two miles above sea-level.

Livin’ the Dream

                The jury is still out on the meaning of dreams, I think.  I don’t really pay much attention to anything besides Ohio State football and what day of the week it is, and the latter is just so I know not to get up early on weekends and go to work.  I’m overstating my inattention to life just a bit, but for the longest time, I didn’t really give a crap about dreams and their meanings because I didn’t really remember any.   A Google search on dream quotes gave me this little gem from Gao Xingjian, “Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self,” and I must say that he’s full of shit, based on the ones I can remember.   However, some dreams worked their way into my memory as, well, memories.  So maybe he’s not that far off the mark.

                You know, I wasn’t sure how I was going to use that quote, but it seems to fit, so far.

                Anyway, I’m not sure when I stopped remembering most of my dreams.  Until recently, I might have remembered one or two every eight-and-a-half months.  It was very rare.  Some are fun, like swimming with whales around the Great Barrier Reef.  I have no idea how I held my breath for so long.  And some are disturbing, like dreaming I was being electrocuted by some stupid-ass torturer guy.   My jaw hurt when I woke up because the ‘lectricity made me clench my jaw, a lot.  I don’t dream like that very often, I think.  Most of the time, the dreams are just weird. 

From sometime in my childhood through a couple years ago, I would often wake up right after a dream and think, “THAT was weird.  There’s no way I’m not going remember that.”  I’d go back to sleep, but in the morning I could only remember thinking that and nothing about the dream.

I do remember a nightmare from my early childhood in Defiance, Ohio.  I remember not liking the bridges on Clinton Street.  I dreamed that they were built like a wooden roller coaster.  Frankenstein and Dracula would climb up the side of the bridge and try to get in the family station wagon as we crossed.  That would send little Teddy to my parents’ room.  And you know, thinking of that dream still gives me chills.  Can you imagine a bridge made like a wooden roller coaster?  That won’t support automobile traffic!

I recently dreamt that I was some kind of union steward living in the barracks again.  The barracks weren’t populated only by people I knew in the army.  There were current co-workers, family members, and a younger Bill Fagerbakke from when he was Dauber Dybinski on the series Coach.  The barracks were older, open-bay buildings and not the newer, dormitory buildings that I spent my regular army career living in, so there were essentially 30 of us sharing a room.  There was a big fuss about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and when Dauber married a guy who was in my platoon at Fort Riley in 1991, the shit was about to hit the fan.  I facilitated the arrangement that it was okay for the two of them to be bunk buddies, but they couldn’t, you know, share a bunk.  We determined that it would just be awkward for the two of them to touch each other’s wangs and have gay sex in a room they shared with 30 other people.  And that was fair. 

I don’t always, or even often, have gay sex as a subject in my dreams, but I’m second-guessing my inclusion of it in this post already.  I just wanted to give an example of how bizarre my dreams can be.

But hey, I was going to talk about remembering my dreams as memories, wasn’t I.  Anyway, there are times when something will come up in a conversation, and I’ll remember something that happened in a dream.  For instance, someone at work might mention having dinner with his mom over the weekend, and I’ll remember that my mom brought me a chicken sandwich from Burger King the other day.   Of course, she didn’t bring me a chicken sandwich from Burger King the other day because she lives in North Carolina, and I live in Maine.  So, instead of having the shared experience of recently dining with our moms, I just smile and ask him what they ate.  Then I think about chicken sandwiches for a while and decide to call my mom soon.

When I was little, I dreamt once that my sister had brought me to her friend’s house, and he’d tied me to a tree in the front yard and held a knife to my throat while he had a pleasant conversation with her.  This is probably the earliest example of a dream that I remembered as memory.  For many years I’d remember this happening and wonder what the Hell had happened.  I wasn’t really terrified or traumatized by the memory, just confused.  I never told anyone about this until recently when I was telling my girlfriend Stephanie about my dream/memory stuff.  Suddenly it hit me; one of the most confusing-and-oddly-not-terrifying memories from my childhood had been a friggin’ dream, man.  Go figure.

The funniest example of this is a conversation I had with my college roommate, Aaron.  He delivered pizzas for Spanky’s in Bangor, and although he was pretty liberal, he told me that sometimes he’d listen to Rush Limbaugh in his car to get an idea of how conservatives think.  (This isn’t the dream yet.)  He talked about Rush having a good point one time—still not the dream—when he was talking about how offensive television and the media had become.  I had to agree with him, and Rush for that matter, because I had watched an episode of Seinfeld that had Jerry telling Kramer he was, “Fucking nuts.”  And I had watched SportsCenter with Rich Eisen commenting on how Mark McGuire was simply ”Beating the shit out of the ball.  He can just fucking hit it.”  I told Aaron that it was true.  The networks would air just about anything, and then I caught myself.  How hilarious, I had agreed with Rush Limbaugh about something.  See what not remembering your dreams can make happen?

Although I remember a lot of my dreams now, I still have to catch myself.  I’ll ask Stephanie if I had told her about something or if I’d only dreamt telling her about it.  If she says I hadn’t told her, I’ll then remember that after telling her, we both turned into wild dogs and scampered through the war-ravaged ruins of New York City.   And while dreams may be more real than I could possibly imagine, I’m going to continue to be vigilant about keeping dreams and reality in separate realms.

I’ve decided to keep the quote in my intro.