Rewind, Replay, Repeat

by Jeff Bell

  November 11, Day 22. Why is it that when I

  stand under these stars at night, gazing up-

  ward at the magnificent heavens, I seem to

  “get it” so clearly. And yet by the next morning,

  I’m right back in my house of horrors again …

  The pattern is starting to take its toll on me. I am the prize fighter who keeps getting off the mat a second before he’s called down for the count. Sam is worried again. Jackie would be too, if I’d let her know yesterday about the extent of my troubles. It was our first phone session, though, and I wanted to put the best face on things. Pretty stupid, I guess, paying a therapist to hear lies about my well-being.

  Focus, I tell myself, as I turn back to my index card to wrap things up for the night. I write down the reminder Kenny Loggins is singing in my head:

  Are you gonna wait for your sign, your miracle?

  Stand up and fight … This is it.

  twenty-two

  fast-forward 5 weeks

  Passion—Life side of the pyramid, Reverence level. Passion is my word of the day, this chilly Saturday in December, and I whisper it to myself as Samantha pulls our minivan into the parking lot of our local Christmas tree farm.

  Sam stops the van, and the girls gush out like water through a broken main. I stay behind a second or two, try to pump some courage into my veins. To believe in life, I remind myself, I’ve got to take part in it. And this is why I’ve come with the girls today—to be a part of our annual Christmas tree outing, one of the many Christian and Jewish holiday traditions that Sam and I have carried into our interfaith family. Unfortunately, there are few things in the world that scare me more than using someone else’s beat-up old saw with a loose and lethal blade, or strapping something as big and awkward as a six-foot Douglas fir to the top of our car.

  “Come oooonn, Daddy!”

  Brianna’s high-pitched voice pierces the frosty air from halfway across the field. She and Nicole are running—sprinting, really—from one tree to another, thrilled, I’m sure, to be out without hats, now that our lice ordeal is behind us at long last.

  Sam waves an arm at me, and I make my way over to her. Slung across her left shoulder is a curved rough-cut saw blade on a wooden stick about three feet long. Sure enough, the bolt that holds the two pieces together appears to be loose.

  “I’m not touching that thing,” I whisper curtly in her ear.

  “I understand,” Sam says between the gritted teeth of the big smile she’s flashing at the girls, still off at a distance. “I think you’ve made that perfectly clear.”

  We walk on, both doing our best to stay focused on our children, the one thing that still bridges our disparate worlds.

  “This one, Daddy,” Nicole shouts all of sudden from about thirty feet away. She is bouncing up and down like a clown on a pogo stick.

  “Watch where you’re stepping!” I bark back at her. “You’re going to trample next year’s sprigs.”

  Undeterred, Nicole keeps up her Tigger-like springing. Sam heads over to have a look.

  “Hey, not that one. This one,” Brianna yells from a row or two over, swinging her arms just in front of a passing family of four.

  “Damn it, Sam, will you pleeeease keep an eye on your youngest,” I snarl. “She just about slammed into that kid.”

  Easy there, big guy, I remind myself. You can get through this. Believe you can. Show some strength. Show some passion. I turn my back on the three of them, do my best to regroup as the rest of my family decides to press on.

  Ten minutes pass. Then ten minutes become twenty, and twenty become sixty. Still no tree. I’d have settled for the first one we saw, if it’d meant we could just get the hell out of here. But the girls can’t reach a consensus to save their lives.

  Finally, a chorus of voices shouts, “This one!”

  “Whatever,” I growl. “Let’s just get things moving.”

  Nikki and Bri begin arguing over who gets to cut down the tree. Sam assures them they can each have a turn. I make a show of being fascinated with something elsewhere, so as to avoid the situation altogether. My head is aching and pounding and throbbing with doubt.

  The girls each take a few minutes with the saw before deciding that the task is bigger than either of them. Samantha goes to work next and puts a good-sized notch in the trunk. But even from thirty feet away, I can hear her grunting as our stubborn tree holds its ground against the dull blade’s attack.

  “Daddy, you take a turn,” Nicole hollers over to me.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” I shout back. “You girls are having so much fun.”

  Clearly, Samantha is not. Her shirt is dark with sweat. She looks exhausted.

  You’re pathetic, I tell myself. Go help your wife. But I can’t. Can’t touch that old saw. I’ll pay the price for years. I just know that I will.

  “Daaaady,” Nicole begs. She is now standing next to me and tugging on my sleeve. “Mommy needs help.”

  As she has so many times in the past, Samantha jumps to my rescue without missing a beat. “I’ve got it, girls. Don’t you worry.”

  “But why can’t Daddy help?” Bri asks, prompting Sam to look up from her saw.

  “He just can’t, sweetheart,” my wife says, now panting and running the back of a hand across her forehead. “He just can’t.”

  I turn away, ashamed, and drop my head. I count the minutes until the tree finally, mercifully, comes tumbling to the ground.

  So now the jig is up. My charade is over. I am exposed forever for the freak that I am.

  Exposed as a freak. This is how it always felt when I got caught falling prey to my OCD—at least at first. The stab of fear. The slap of shame. The crushing weight of utter despair. Everything ruined for all eternity.

  But then, always, I would find a way to talk myself out of trouble one more time. Always. The night of the Christmas tree fiasco, I’d call the girls over and explain that Daddy wasn’t feeling well today, or that my back was bothering me, or that I’m allergic to sawdust. Something. I’d come up with something. I always did. The girls would understand. They always did.

  I became the master of deceit.

  Still, there were growing signs that my magic act was wearing thin. Especially at work. Maybe I’d pulled one too many rabbits out of my hat, resorted to one too many elaborate sleights of hand. I don’t know; perhaps it was all in my imagination. It just seemed there were ever more offhand comments and questions about my habits, ever more sideways glances and puzzled looks. Not from listeners; they hadn’t a clue. It was the dozen or so people I worked with most directly who had me concerned. Like the security guard who couldn’t understand why I chose to park in the spot farthest from the station (and easiest to get into and out of), even after he’d spelled out twice how I was complicating his rounds. Or our engineering staffers, who would scratch their faces in confusion when I’d point out the smallest, most ludicrous technical problems. “Am I missing something?” our chief engineer would ask me each time, his eyebrows always hoisted high.

  A radio newsroom is a loud, charged, and intimate place. Phones, scanners, TV monitors, intercoms, news wires, network satellite feeds—all amid four walls positioned far too close to each other. One’s best chance for privacy, I learned early on, is simply to blend in. Fortunately, the business is full of independent misfits with every imaginable oddity. Eccentrics everywhere. Clearly my own peculiarities were far more pronounced than most. Still, quirks are quirks. And quirks were what I always wrote off my most visible compulsions as. “Oh, just an old quirk of mine,” I’d explain in response to all kinds of questions about my many odd habits.

  The Quirk Defense had worked well for me over the years, especially in defending my need to roll tape on my every hour of airtime. “It’s not as if I listen back to these things,” I’d always huff with feigned indignation, intimating that the whole practice was more of a superstitious thing, really, like a quirky basketball player who’s got to pull his so
cks up and down twice before heading out on the floor. The thing was, though, I did listen back. And they knew it. They would see me with my headphones on after the show, hunching over a tape recorder, hitting the Rewind button again and again. Some of them, I’m guessing, even knew what I was up to.

  It was just so complicated in those days, with Doubt always suggesting that I was screwing our clients. Are you really certain you played that commercial spot that you just signed off on?

  How could I not be certain? The process was so simple and unambiguous. I’d follow a computer-generated commercial log that told me precisely when and where to play each recorded spot. Sears airs at 12:17, Big O Tires a minute after that. Each spot was self-contained on a cartridge that looked like an old eight-track tape, and each was labeled with a unique tracking number that matched up with my log. All I had to do was plug the cartridge into a special playback machine, hit the Start button, and check off that the commercial aired.

  My problem, though, was that I couldn’t seem to trust my own bookkeeping. The Sears spot would end, and I’d put my check mark through the word Sears on my program log. But then Doubt would start messing with me. Do you really remember playing the commercial? The Sears jingle could still be fresh in my head. The playback machine could still be flashing its “spot completed” light, and still there I’d be second-guessing myself.

  “Hey, Kitty,” I’d resort to saying. “I must be going nuts. Did we just air that Sears ad a minute ago?”

  “The Sears ad?” my partner would ask, eyes narrowed and focused on mine. “It just ended, you big goober!”

  “Right,” I’d apologize, shaking my head. “Of course. Thanks.”

  Crisis solved.

  But Kitty wasn’t paying attention. Can you really trust her? Doubt would remind me it was a good thing I was rolling tape on the show—tape I’d play back for myself just as soon as the show ended at seven o’clock. I’d hear the Sears jingle and think everything was fine. But then I’d start questioning whether I’d gotten my jingle tunes right. Was that Sears or Home Depot? Better play back the entire spot. One more time to make sure the announcer actually said Sears.

  Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. I couldn’t stop myself.

  On a good night, it was just Sears or some other individual spot that required my checking. On a bad one though, Doubt could convince me to play back my entire three-hour show, checking each and every spot against the commercial log in front of me. Like everything else with my twisted OCD logic, I’d convince myself that I was doing the right thing by being so meticulous; after all, I owed it to our clients. God Almighty, did they ever have a friend in me, as did our general management. Could my bosses have asked for a more conscientious employee?

  Night after night I played back my airchecks. Never—not even once—did I find a checked-off spot that I’d failed to air.

  “Hey, Jeff, catch!”

  It takes my brain a good second or two to figure out it’s a set of car keys that is headed my way.

  “How ’bout you drive us home?” says my boss, Ken, more as a statement than a question, really. “After that glass of wine at lunch, I’m thinking I’d just as soon not be behind the wheel.”

  It’s late December, and we’ve just wrapped up our staff Christmas party at a downtown restaurant. Our news director, Paul, and I are walking with Ken to his nearby car. Never for a second have I considered the possibility that I’ll be asked to drive us back to the station.

  “I, uh, I’d … rather not,” I blurt out, searching in a panic for some reasonable explanation. I haven’t had any wine and they know it, so that excuse is out of the question. Just seconds ago, I was goofing around with the gang, so I can’t tell them I’m feeling sick either. The truth? Yeah, right.

  Paul picks up on my hesitation. “Here, give me the keys,” he says, reaching out his hand. We all walk a few steps in awkward silence.

  I’ve got to say something. Something. Here, my boss has asked a simple favor of me—for the most noble of reasons, no less—and what have I done? Dismissed him outright. Not good.

  Ken and Paul strike up a conversation. I let myself slip a step or two behind. Say something, damn it. Anything.

  “I have a confession to make,” I finally mutter.

  Ken and Paul stop, await my next words. I myself have no idea what they might be.

  “I’m … I’m kinda phobic about driving other people’s cars.”

  “Really?” they both say, almost a little too much in unison, as if scripted that way.

  “Yeah, it’s this hang-up I’ve always had.”

  Good one, Jeff, I reassure myself. That should end that. But instead it somehow spawns a flood of questions.

  “No kidding,” Paul says. “Anyone’s car?”

  “Would it matter if the owner wasn’t in the car with you?” Ken wants to know.

  Paul: “Rental cars too?”

  Ken: “Has it always been a problem for you?”

  Now my head is overheating, the way it does when the circuitry up there feels like it’s about to fry.

  “Well, actually, I’m not too big on driving with passengers, in general,” I tell them before thinking through where that answer might lead.

  “Wow,” Paul says. “So your wife must do all the driving?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I admit with some hesitation, imagining myself shrinking another foot or two with each step I take.

  “Fascinating,” Ken says, now shaking his head.

  Soon we are getting into Ken’s car. I am so lightheaded I could easily pass out. I console myself that the worst is over, only to find out that in fact it is not.

  “I know this lady who has an extreme fear of cars,” Ken volunteers, then proceeds to tell her story. I nod my head every now and then, do my best to sound interested. God, I’m a freak, I keep thinking to myself. And a liar. And a fraud. And a horrible person. My life is over, and I deserve it to be.

  And then a few minutes later, my troubles compound. There, on the car ceiling just above my head, is a good-sized scratch in the fabric. I must have put that there while climbing into the backseat, I decide. Now what to do? I know I’m falling into the classic OCD trap of “transference,” taking all my anxiety from one episode and moving it to another.

  An eternity later, we pull into the station lot. Ken and Paul get out of the car. I can’t. I am glued to my seat.

  “What’s the problem?” Ken asks when he sees me staring at the ceiling.

  “I, uh, think I may have put a scratch in your—”

  “It’s fine,” Ken interrupts, using a tone a father might take with his four-year-old son. He is shaking his head, staring at me. “Come on now. Let’s go.”

  I know two things in this instant that churn my stomach like spoiled milk: first, that I’m not as clever as I think I am; and second, that “quirky” will no longer suffice as an explanation for my quirks.

  twenty-three

  fast-forward 2 days

  I guess I’d forgotten just how invigorating a stiff summer breeze can feel as it whistles past your ears, how refreshing a splash of salt water can taste at the corners of your mouth, how soothing a chorus of low-flying seagulls can sound at the end of a long afternoon on the Bay.

  Slowly, though, it’s all coming back to me now as the sun sinks with abandon toward the mighty Pacific. Dad and I are exhausted too, but in the best kind of way. After hours of short-tacking back and forth along the San Francisco shoreline and clear on through the Golden Gate, we are at long last enjoying the fruits of our labor: a spectacular, spinnaker-flying broad reach back to Alameda, where Samantha and Mom and a hearty steak dinner are awaiting us at a window table for four at The Rusty Scupper.

  These past five hours have been pure nautical bliss. Even more importantly, they’ve afforded my father and me what we’ve most needed for at least a decade: some quality time together aboard The Boat—time to sail, talk, take in all the elements, give ourselves a fresh start at this whole boating thing. A fathe
r and son sharing a common bond and a common passion.

  This is how I always dreamed it could be. This is how I always knew it was supposed to be.

  Somewhere along the windward shoreline of Treasure Island, the sound of fluttering nylon snaps me out of my wind-and-sea trance. We are, I now realize, sailing directly into the mammoth shadow of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, where sudden wind shifts are both frequent and unpredictable. The Boat’s huge red, white, and blue spinnaker is folding itself in half in a loud and colorful demand for attention. A quick adjustment—to the spinnaker pole, the sheets, or most likely, to both—is clearly needed. I jump into action without even thinking.

  “Got it,” I shout to Dad on my way to the bow, pulling the slack out of the leeward sheet. I scurry forward, but I can’t get there soon enough.

  BAM!

  Our confused aluminum spinnaker pole slams against the mast rigging. The massive parachute-like sail to which it’s attached deflates itself before I can stop it.

  “Come ON, God-damn-it!” I hear Dad yell from the cockpit. He is shaking his head back and forth in short and quick strokes, much as he always did in my youth when he wanted to make clear his disappointment with me.

  Suddenly, a strong westerly crosses our stern and breathes new life into the flagging spinnaker. In an instant, the crisis is over. A smile returns to my father’s face every bit as quickly. “Come on back,” he says almost playfully, as if nothing ever happened.

  But it’s too late. The damage is done. Something deep inside of me has snapped that can’t be put back together again. Mechanically, I about-face on the deck and return to the cockpit.

  Now Dad and I are standing just inches apart. I am the ten-year-old kid who scrambled but failed to set the anchor just right in the river. I am the fifth-grader who tried to hang the fenders properly but still managed to put a scratch in The Boat’s shiny fiberglass hull. I am the grown man with OCD staring into the eyes of his father.