“Hey, baby!” My dad’s always so excited to talk to me. Which kind of makes me sick.
“Hey.”
“What, you’re not happy to talk to your dad?” Freddie sounds like he wasn’t expecting this. Which is obviously a defense mechanism—I haven’t been very happy to hear from him since I was twelve and a half.
“I’m mad at you,” I say plainly.
“Oh, you are?” His tone is like Barbara Walters in one of those after-the-Oscars interview shows. Warm and curious. “What is it?”
“Yeah, I am,” I say. “It’s taking me years to undo all the bullshit you created for me.”
“Now, Tracy.” He’s a little bored. We’ve been over this a thousand times. “I’ve told you I’m sorry; what more do you want?”
“Nothing, I guess.” It’s not like I want him to be waterboarded or something. “I’m just not over it yet.”
“Well. You’re going to have to get over it.” Freddie rarely uses an ungracious tone of voice, but he is now. “The past is the past.”
“Yeah, except for when it’s not. Like now,” I say, bruised. “I’m still suffering the consequences of your obsession with women and sex.” I tend to use a lot of psychological jargon when I’m putting the screws to Freddie.
“Okay, then,” Freddie says in his Barbara Walters voice. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”
So I tell Freddie all the things I am learning in therapy and in my reading. How he wanted regard. Especially from women. Not love, but regard: to be considered or thought of in a certain way. He wanted to be thought of as important, handsome, desirable, sexual. And he wanted power over women: to set the rules, say what happens, and judge their bodies. And how that affected me in ways too numerous to catalog in a fifteen-minute phone call. From body image to sexuality to, of course, my problems with men. How first, I chose men not like him. And now, I choose men just like him. Which sucks.
“You’re a very intelligent young woman, Tracy,” Freddie says.
“Is that all you can say? I’m intelligent?” Now I’m really pissed off.
“What do you want me to say?” And so is he—pissed—though this is as close as he’s going to come to open warfare. Freddie’s a lover, not a fighter. Like Paul.
“How about, ‘You’re right and I’m so sorry, Tracy. That must have sucked for you,’” I retort. “How about that?”
“You’re right, Tracy,” he concedes. “And I am so sorry.”
I hate that he’s so willing to apologize. That he doesn’t counter-argue. Or defend. Mostly, he just listens—and as I sort through more and more of my pain in sobriety, there seems to be an endless supply of “uncoveries”—and he admits to it all, and says he is sorry, and sympathizes with my pain. It’s kind of a bummer, too, because unless he fights, I can’t fight back. And I really want to fight.
So, I’ve found a new way to show my anger—not by what I do, but by what I don’t (or won’t) do.
I don’t send him pictures of my son. And I won’t visit.
This is much more hurtful than not picking up the phone. And when he asks me why, I say, “You reap what you sow.” And most of the time, he takes it silently.
Once in a while he gets angry. He tells me I am selfish and uncaring. That he is stuck in there and I am depriving him of the one thing that would brighten his day: a picture of my son.
“You don’t give a shit about me,” he says. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
“That’s not true,” I say calmly. “I care. I’m just busy in my life. I’ve got a million things to do: the groceries, the carpool, the laundry, and a job to make it all work.” I put a little spin on this—I want Freddie to feel ashamed that I’m out here doing all of this on my own.
“I’m your father, Tracy,” he reminds me. “I’m human.”
I don’t really know what he means by this. Because he’s my father I shouldn’t be angry? To the contrary. You’re my father, so you should have protected me! That’s what I want to say. You should have gotten your shit together! You should have let go of your pathological need for the attention of women and gotten a job driving a bus, so I wouldn’t have had to suffer! But all that’s been said already. A number of times.
Then, I have a breakthrough.
“Hold on,” I say. “I think I just got it.”
“Got what?” He can hear something in my voice and he’s grateful there may be a reprieve soon.
“Got it. You know how when I was little and I was just getting shuttled around here and there, or in foster care…And how you were out chasing women and chasing deals, and doing whatever else it is you were doing?”
“Yeah…” He’s not sure where this is going.
“Well, that’s how I am now. I’m just living. It’s not that I’m actively ignoring you. I’m not driving to work going, I wonder how my dad is right now, sitting in his cell, lonely and hurt that I haven’t sent him a picture of Sam. I’m just driving to work! Not thinking of you at all,” I say excitedly. “That’s how you were, too!
“When I was little, you weren’t actively ignoring me. You were just doing your life. Your version of going to work and doing the laundry. You weren’t doing it to me. You were just doing it.” It’s hard to keep up, the thoughts are coming so fast. “You see?”
“Sure, but—”
“Now the tables are turned. I’m so busy with the stuff that’s in front of me, I just never quite get around to thinking about where you are or what you’re doing or how all my busy-ness might be affecting you.” I finally take a full breath. “But I’m not doing it to you either. I’m just doing it! Isn’t that awesome? I totally get it!”
He gets it, too. Karma’s a bitch.
This might not sound like a huge revelation, but it is. It has several implications.
1) It means I can begin to let go of my anger—because I can comprehend how my dad did what he did. Yes, Freddie’s choices had particularly negative effects. But, in principle at least, I can see how he’s not all that different from anyone else. I can bring him back into the circle of being a human being, not a monster.
2) It means I can also let go of being a victim. Because being a victim is a double-edged sword. You get to be right (and righteous), but then you’re stuck there.
3) It means that one of these days, I just might go visit him.
PAUL CAN’T SEEM TO GET a job. It’s been five months since we got married and in that time he’s been up for five jobs and lost them all—including a huge nine-day extravaganza that would have set us up for the year. With each rejection, Paul is getting increasingly demoralized. I do my best to try to keep his spirits up.
“I suck,” he says. “That’s why no one wants to hire me. I ruined my career with that McDonald’s job.” He’s talking about some job that went horribly awry not last year but the year before. “But what was I supposed to do? My brother was under arrest! I was distracted.”
“It’s okay. You’ll get one,” I say encouragingly. “Any minute now.”
“You don’t understand, Tracy.” He says my name all clipped like he does when he’s angry. He’s got that irrational, closed-minded thing going on where he just cannot hear anything that might be hopeful. “If this keeps happening, my company will stop putting me up for jobs and start putting up someone else.” Paul’s face is hard. He gets mean looking when he’s afraid.
He has a point. In the entertainment business, success often comes in a “run.” It doesn’t matter whether you are a singer, writer, director, actor, or costume designer; most people have a “moment,” and unless you die early, like Elvis or Marilyn Monroe, eventually it’s over. There are a few immortals, like Madonna or Clint Eastwood, who have thirty-or forty-year runs. But most people fall a lot closer to the Milli Vanilli end of the spectrum.
“Well, they haven’t stopped putting you up for jobs yet. So why not be willing to be one of the people who keeps working?” I’m losing patience. I understand Paul’s fear, of course I do;
I grew up poor as shit. I just hate to see him letting it rule his mind.
“I’m telling you, they’ve figured it out. I completely blow every other job.” Paul looks at life like he’s watching CNBC, but instead of focusing on the program, he can’t stop looking at the ticker tape crawling across the bottom of the screen that says, You’re fucked, you’re fucked, you’re fucked, you’re fucked…
“Never expect anything you don’t want,” I say against my better judgment. I know I should be quiet. Paul’s in so much fear he can’t hear me. Can’t I see that? Too bad I’m not known for my ability to stop talking.
“I don’t want to hear your New Age positivity bullshit, Tracy.”
He isn’t the first guy to say that. And he isn’t the first guy to be wrong about it, either. It’s not that I’m into positive thinking. It’s that I’m into exercising free will! I may not be able to control the world, but at least I can choose what I’d like to have happen. If I were Paul, I’d visualize two big buttons, like on a game show. One is red and says:
NEVER WORK AGAIN!
The other is green and says:
HAVE A WONDERFUL CAREER NO MATTER HOW UNLIKELY THAT LOOKS RIGHT THIS SECOND!
Which one am I going to hit? I’m not saying I’m going to get what I want right at this moment, but my life experience has shown me that if I keep hitting the positive button no matter what, all kinds of cool things will happen. Like eventually I’ll write a book.
This is not how Paul thinks. Paul thinks life is a book that is already written, and he’s really afraid that the last page says, Hah! I told you you were fucked! Sucker… There’s absolutely nothing I can say to change his mind. And I really want to change his mind. Because if he doesn’t get a job (and soon), I worry about what’s going to happen to us.
PAUL’S SHOWING DEFINITE SIGNS of mental problems. First off, he doesn’t leave the house. Not really. I mean, he walks across the street to get a double Americano at the little coffee place every day. And he occasionally goes with me to the movies or we go to dinner at one or two places that he favors—one of them in East L.A., miles from any Hollywood types. But unless he’s getting on a plane, he can usually be found sitting behind his desk. All. Day. Long. When I leave for work (that is, when I work—I’m down to only two days a week), he is sitting there. And when I return, he is sitting there. Looking at his computer. I try not to say too much about it, afraid to push him over the edge.
“How was your day?” I ask, like he had a “day” in the way the word is commonly used.
“Fine,” he says. At least he tries to make it sound like he was productive. “I got some work done on the script.” He means for his animated movie.
“Oh, yeah? How’s it coming?” I try to sound interested. It’s painful to go through the motions like this, but what other choice do I have? I can’t let loose with a bunch of my fear and say what I really think—When is something going to happen? You’re going crazy! You need therapy! We can’t go on like this! It would be counterproductive. I used to think being married to a tortured, mentally ill artist seemed romantic, like in that French movie Betty Blue or something. Not anymore. (It took a couple of decades, but my twenties are finally over.)
It’s beginning to dawn on me that Paul’s agoraphobic. “I’m a hermit,” he says. But that’s just a nice way of putting it. I used to wonder exactly how people executed agoraphobia. Did they literally never leave the house?
Now I know—they just don’t leave the house unless they absolutely have to. Which, on a day-to-day basis, appears simply as a “preference” to “hang out” at home. Do they not talk to anyone? No, they just arrange their lives so that they’re usually only talking to someone they already know. Well.
Sam is a little young to do the math on why Paul has been home so much but I’m aware that he’s probably picking up at least some of the tension around here. It helps that he lives at Dan’s half the week, but still, things need to change.
Finally, six months into the marriage, six months without a job for him, and six months without ever being at home alone for me, we get some relief. Paul is going to direct another music video for the British Pop Star. This is good for two reasons. One, it’ll help him rediscover his ability to manifest work. And two, it’s going to be in India.
“You have to take me,” I say when he tells me they’re paying his hotel and airfare. This doesn’t sound nearly as much like a polite request as I wanted it to. “I’ll pay for my ticket. And stow away in your room.”
“I don’t know, Tracy. I’m going to be working,” Paul says.
“You know I won’t get in the way. I’m supergood at amusing myself,” I argue. This is true. I’m an excellent traveler, and I need very little hand-holding. It’s one of the few times I’d actually rather do things alone. I have more interesting experiences as a traveler when I’m not in a couple. “I must go,” I say. I just can’t imagine being left at home while Paul experiences India. “Please!?”
“I’ll ask those guys,” Paul says. Normally he would be fine with me coming along. But in our six months of marriage, his lack of work has made him feel like I am more of a liability than an asset. If he were struggling and unemployed alone, he’d feel a lot less terrible about it.
Then there’s the fact that we were only together for ten months when we got married. And during that time he was traveling every other month. We never actually spent more than two or three weeks together at a stretch. It’s hard to get tired of someone when your relationship is seventeen days on, eight days off, twenty-three days on, twelve days off. He’s starting to get sick of me.
“Please?”
“I said I’ll ask.” Paul’s tone of voice is very Case Closed.
Fine then.
It takes a full week, but he finally agrees to take me. Preparing for the trip brings a new level of purpose and bustle to our lives. Paul seems to have come alive again, which is a big relief. He sounds and looks so good, I don’t even mind it when he bores me with mundane details about things like the camera equipment he is taking, which I know nothing about except that he rents it at a place called Cameras Incorporated. And the only reason I know that is because he says “Cameras Incorporated” a lot and in a way that somehow sticks in my ear.
Shrug.
Two weeks later we are in India, which is more than it’s cracked up to be. Way more.
More people drying their clothes on the median of a busy six-lane street. More four-hundred-year-old banyan trees. More need to cover your head and your shoulders. More unbelievably tasty food. More contradictions, such as the impression that India is this wildly foreign place when in fact everyone speaks English. More insane poverty—and more white-gloved luxury. More cows in the street, and more cell phones. A ton of cows and a ton of cell phones.
More of all of this.
But less stress.
As I mentioned earlier, Paul and I are never better than when we’re traveling, and I think I’ve figured out why. Because when we’re traveling, women are much less of an issue. At home in Los Angeles, women are everywhere, and not just any women, but a certain type of woman—beautiful, sexy, and hungry for validation. Now that we’ve been together awhile, it’s starting to turn into our most regularly occurring argument topic. Like at the birthday party we went to last month.
“Do you have to keep looking at that girl?” I say.
I hate parties—or maybe just when Paul’s with me—but this one is being given by one of my best friends so I have to be here.
“What girl?” he answers blankly. How come he never knows which girl?
“The one you keep looking at,” I say. I can tell when a woman Paul finds sexually interesting walks into a room. Several micro-expressions flit across his face, he blinks once or twice, he orients his body in her direction, and his energy shifts in a way that is invisible but, at least to me, completely tangible.
I turn to get a look at the girl, but I can predict what I’m going to see, because I know what g
ets Paul’s attention. Top three hits: dark hair, a borderline eating disorder, and bad boundaries. (I also know what doesn’t get his attention: big boobs, conventionally pretty faces, and blond hair in general. He’s much more Dwell magazine than Playboy.) Paul likes low self-esteem that masquerades as high self-esteem, which is to say a cocky girl who seems independent-slash-bitchy but who has dialed every knob on her outfit, facial expression, hairstyle, and manner toward gaining sexual approval from men. These girls are impossible for Paul (or me) to ignore—the visual equivalent of those guys who ride Harleys without mufflers, ripping through the streets in full sonic glory.
“Her,” I say, nodding in the direction of a super-skinny chick wearing a cute pink nipped-at-the-waist blazer. She’s about ten feet away, chatting with someone. She’s the Banana Republic version of what Paul likes.
“Oh, her?” Paul says. “Whatever.”
As we pretend to mingle, I watch the woman, who is maybe thirty-five or thirty-six, ever so slightly angle her body toward Paul. She has his attention and she knows it, but unless you are hypervigilant (like me!), you probably wouldn’t detect it. As I observe the two of them doing this dance, I begin to get more and more anxious. I know if I tried to tell Paul what he was doing, he would deny it. And not necessarily because he’s a liar, but because he doesn’t even know he is doing it. Neither does she. But since I spent the first three-plus years of my life dependent on my dad—a man who walked into a room just to see if there was a woman (or three, or four) in there he’d want to fuck—I’m exceedingly attuned to that energy.
It’s an energy Paul’s got like crazy. It’s what I love and hate about him.
What I find especially interesting about this situation is how the three of us are locked into a pattern that only one of us—me—is actually aware of. I happen to know that the woman is recently divorced; her husband (a boy-man very similar energetically to Paul) had left her for another woman a year ago. And here she is orienting herself to another woman’s husband, just as some other woman did to get her man. She’s obviously attracted to men like her husband. And so am I. She and I are alike that way. The crazy thing is how, if she actually “got” Paul, she would just be getting more of the same.
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