I gotta tell you, I never thought this story was going to turn out this way. Over the course of a few days, it has come to life with a kind of depth and dimension I never imagined. Let’s start at the beginning. Out of the blue, I decided to initiate a conversation with my friend about how different it is to be 75, when looking back at 35, his age. I know I have written quite a bit about how my age has been such a surprise on so many levels, nothing I could have possibly imagined at any prior time, certainly including back then. Well, the conversation didn’t go the way I expected and at times felt like an argument, which was the last thing I wanted, partially because I thought I was so right, always one of those hindsight miscalculations.
This chasm stayed with me and I knew somewhere in there, a story was lurking. I realized I overlooked an important half of my life theory. From my perspective, I have experienced all the ages that preceded this one. Here is where I screwed up and where it has taken me. He was reacting just like he should, which got me thinking about being 35, the beginning of our story.
I started thinking about where the hell I was and what I was doing 40 years ago. In the close of my Zen sit a few mornings ago, I removed the Buddha from the wooden box he stoically rests upon. I knew my divorce papers were tucked away somewhere in there. I wanted to check dates to see where I was at with that. The handful of archaic looking, photocopied pages were tri-folded, stapled at the top, tucked into a mortuary grey, thicker paper. While I was only interested in time lines, some absurd words caught my eye, like “cruel and inhuman treatment and abandonment………” It was an extraordinarily difficult time and only a couple of years prior to 1980, too fresh to be scars, still open wounds.
Honestly, I am not completely sure of the immediate moves I made, leaving the home in Glen Cove, Long Island. My first true home of my own was in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on 7th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenue, a block and a half from Prospect Park. I lived on the bottom floor of a brownstone, with its own entrance. I even had a small yard at the back of my railroad style apartment. When you walked in, the hallway shot straight back, with rooms on the left side of the hallway wall.
It was a very liberating time for me. The demise of my marriage, less than two years prior, was extremely difficult and very painful, the details of which I would never share. It was a huge change, going from single to married, especially in my mid 20’s. In a way, it was like being in someone else’s movie, handed a script I was too young and inexperienced to write, but doing the best I could in the role. Now, in my own space, living alone for the first time in my life, I had a feeling of being a bit more in charge.
My relationship with my two boys got pretty badly beaten up, unpredictable, terribly confusing and scary. We had to establish a new way of being father and son, each one unique in their way of responding. I was now a weekend Dad, compensating as best I could for their inescapable feelings of abandonment. I know we enjoyed ourselves in Brooklyn. I purposely let them feel freer than they were accustomed to at home. There was a gang, a term used very loosely, of some young boys, who lived on 7th street. My sons became part of the posse, running around in the evening, crossing 7th Avenue to play in the darkened school park. The boys would always stop me, wanting to know when my sons were coming next. I guess I wanted to be a cool Dad, foolishly thinking there was anyway I could erase what they lived through, something I have been reminded of during the subsequent decades.
I got myself sucked into the broadcast advertising business, back in the late 60’s. It was a number of scenes earlier in that same goddamn script that took years to throw away. Somewhere back there, my muse fell mute, drowned out by expectation. I got myself involved in “the business”, which was not the mafia, it was the world of network television and advertising agencies. It was only a few years after Man Men, but a bit lower on the rungs of the ego ladder. Millions and millions of dollars was spent by people like me, purchasing :30 and :60 commercials with the three television networks. It was a feeling of power, intoxicating in the beginning and just a job toward the end of my tenure in it.
As I said earlier, my conversation with my friend really threw me completely off my all knowing theory of longevity’s lessons, back in time, trying to recreate that time, a long 40 years ago. I worked at a progression of four advertising agencies, each move a slight upgrade in money and responsibility, which was kind of how your career path was supposed to be paved. My last agency, before bouncing around the world of cable television ad sales, was Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. I smashed my personal longevity record by being there for six years, from ’76-’82. I actually left with profit sharing, promptly spending it, becoming an absentee owner of a bar in Easton, PA. It is one of my great stories, but not for now.
The most incredible thing has happened to me within the past few days and while I am prone to exaggeration, a writer’s affliction, this is absolutely not, I swear. My memory sucks and it always has. My brother remembers all sorts of shit from our childhood and I got nothing. I suppose the good news when they tell me memory loss is a part of aging, I can confidently respond that nothing has changed.
I really immersed myself in this limp down memory lane. I did the only thing I could, I went on line and punched in Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. I’ll be damned, somewhere on the first page, up popped a group Facebook page for alumni. I joined and wrote a fairly inane introductory paragraph and that’s when it happened! People started responding from my past and one person in particular wanted to know if it was really me. Memory issues aside, I remembered her and remembered how much fun I had talking to her all those years ago. People like me instinctively know when they have a good audience and she was great. Since then, we have talked on the phone and caught up a little. She even ordered a copy of my memoir, Halloween in Portland.
I have had more jobs than most people could ever imagine. You know, you develop these office friendships with people you see everyday and feel like they have some solid substance. When you leave that environment, 98% of those wonderful connections seem to quietly atrophy and you start up a whole new batch at the next address.
I have had the most wonderful time revisiting 35 in 1980. I have managed to glue together some of the pieces and it has been a real joy. What started out as some philosophical stand off, two ages speaking different languages, became this symphonic melding of memories, today getting lost in yesterday. You know, the direction for learning and growth goes one way and that is forward and forward only.
