At Lancaster the school year was arranged into three segments, with a month vacation after the first two. That first vacation I decided to visit Ralph Steadman in Maidstone, Kent, southeast of London. Ralph had been “Uncle Ralph” as long as I could remember. I still remember that summer he and Anna, his wife, came to visit us at Owl Farm and he tried to crush my head with a large rock down by the river. I explored parts of southwest England first, and then headed to Ralph’s for Christmas. His home was more like a manor house, with a vast stone façade and a circular driveway of gravel set in a large green lawn bordered by oak trees. I was fortunate enough to stay in the Leonardo room, named because of the Last Supper mural Ralph had painted on the wall above the bed. The room was huge, at least forty feet square, with several tall windows and a set of French doors that looked out over the lawn and the creek. The ceilings were very high, fifteen feet at least. It was a room fit for a king, and it was mine for ten days. I remember sitting in that room one day at the typewriter I had set up near the French doors, working on an essay for school, and thinking that life couldn’t get better than this.
When I wasn’t working on a paper for school or spending time with Uncle Ralph, I borrowed his trumpet and tried to teach myself to play “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” There was a little gazebo in his backyard with many windows and an old printing press in the center, and I would take the trumpet there and practice. At the end of my stay, he said he would give me twenty pounds toward a trumpet if I would promise to practice. I agreed, and on my way back to school I found a secondhand music store in London, and bought an old trumpet. Back at school I would practice in a classroom at night, and though I was a raw beginner, the reverb created by the sound bouncing off the tile floors and the concrete walls made it sound lovely. One night the janitor stopped by and said, “I’ve never heard Dvořák’s New World Symphony so badly butchered,” and then picked up the trumpet and proceeded to show me how it ought to be played.
It was a magical year. I suddenly became someone different. In some respects it was much like Tufts in the amount of time I spent alone, and yet it was completely different. I was different. I had Elizabeth and Matt and Rosie—who liked me just as I was. I bought new clothes and went to the school dances whenever I could. I was not afraid.
When I came back to the States the following summer I stopped in New York to see Laila, Hunter’s ex-girlfriend. She told me that she had been going to Al-Anon and that it had been very helpful in dealing with Hunter. She invited me to a meeting and I went along. I remember the Twelve Steps were printed on a poster hanging on the wall, and I read each one and checked them off. “Okay, that’s easy. Done and simple enough,” all the way through the twelve points. We talked about it afterward and I think I dismissed it as something marginally interesting.
It was sometime in my senior year that I decided to look into it further. I hadn’t thought of Hunter as an alcoholic before. Drinking was a part of Hunter, like his shorts, his Chuck Taylors, the TarGard cigarette holder, his unpredictable anger, and his bowlegged walk. He was just Hunter, and it had never occurred to me that he could be any different than he was, or that there could be an explanation for his behavior. However, for all the progress we had made over the past eight or nine years, our relationship was still filled with tension and I was exceedingly wary of him. Though I didn’t hate him any longer, I was still angry with him for being so difficult, unpredictable, volatile, unreasonable, and selfish. He was often such a bastard.
My relationship with Hunter was not like my far more conventional relationship with my son, a long and steady path made up of thousands of daily events over the years, none a big deal by itself, but notable for the strength of the foundation they make up. Instead, it was made up of relatively few but very intense events, each of which built up or tore down the foundation so that the change was clear. One of these events was my decision to go through the Twelve-Step process, for real this time.
What exactly compelled me to seek out a Twelve-Step meeting in Boulder, I do not remember. However, I was not happy. For all my friendships, adventure, and discovery during my year in England, I was still not happy. I went to a meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholics, a subgroup of Al-Anon that focused on adult children specifically, rather than Al-Anon’s more general mission of serving friends, spouses, and family members of an alcoholic. The Twelve-Step programs were popular in Boulder then and there were plenty of meetings to choose from.
One of the most effective aspects of the meeting format is, first, the chance to listen to other people talk about their lives without any obligation to reply to them or to advise them, and second, the opportunity to talk without being advised or replied to. I listened and heard familiar stories. The more I listened, the more I began to understand that my unhappiness was not unique. I began attending meetings regularly and got a sponsor, which is the first step toward working through the Twelve Steps.
Hearing these stories helped me to understand that I was far from alone in my suffering. There were a lot of people like me, some worse off, some better off, but all of them suffering to some degree.
Over that first year I came to the understanding that Hunter’s suffering was not unique either, and that at least a part of it was the result of his drinking. And therefore a part of my suffering was the result of his drinking. During one of my visits to Owl Farm I decided to write him a letter. I did not trust myself to be able to speak what I wanted to tell him, nor did I trust Hunter to listen. So I wrote a him a letter.
I don’t have that letter now, but I remember it was an accusation and a declaration: an accusation that he was indeed an alcoholic, and a declaration that I wasn’t going to assist him with his drinking. I told him I wasn’t going to get him drinks anymore. Furthermore, if he didn’t watch his temper with me I would leave. It was a page or two, typed. I gave it to him in an envelope and went into the living room where I waited for him to read it.
He didn’t take it well. He gave it back, marked up. He had circled words or sentences in red pen, and written words like “Balls!,” “Chickenshit!,” and “Evil Poppa” in the margins or across the page, in response to things I had written. I had been warned not to expect hugs and kisses, but his reaction was still a deep disappointment to me. We didn’t talk about it, and we avoided each other for the rest of the day. However, the next time he wanted a beer or ice for his whiskey, he didn’t ask me. He got it himself or asked Deborah to get it for him.
On a roll now, I gave a similar letter to my mother that year. I don’t have that letter either, and though it was no doubt accusatory and needlessly harsh, she took it much better than Hunter did, and over years and decades we have talked, struggled, adjusted, compromised, and fought toward a very different but just as necessary reconciliation.
That year I realized a couple of fundamental truths: whatever my father’s greater virtues were as a writer, a warrior, and a wise man, in his daily life he was a basket case, or in the vocabulary of the time, dysfunctional. He was unpredictable, unreliable, unreasonable, and given to sudden fits of rage, and if I was confused and disturbed when I went into his world, it was no surprise—it was a confusing and disturbing world he had created around him. The second fundamental truth is that I did not have to be part of his craziness. I could simply leave if it got too weird, just walk out the door, or even drive home.
To many people these truths may seem obvious and self-evident, as if I stated that, at the age of twenty-three, I realized that the sun always rises in the east, and that a hot stove burns. But to me it was new. It meant that I was no longer at the mercy of his madness. It is hard to describe the sense of freedom it gave me to know that now I stood outside of Hunter’s world, and that I could step in and out of it at will. I had been like some animal that had lived in a cage so long that even after the cage was removed, the animal still acted as if the bars of the cage were there, and didn’t bother to check, because they had always been there. And then I looked up and saw that they were gon
e.
I spent another six years in the Twelve-Step program in Boulder. There was a particularly rigorous approach in Boulder in those days which took the Twelve-Step process and added a bit of est (Erhard Seminars Training) and a pinch of existential philosophy. This approach required an exhaustive inventory of every incident I could remember, an analysis of those incidents to determine a core set of beliefs, a re-examination of each incident to see how I used it to reinforce those core beliefs, and then a final review of all the incidents to see if there were other, more accurate interpretations. The whole process took a few years. For instance, I may have a memory of my mother yelling at me when I was a child because I spilled a pot on the stove. At the time it served as more proof that there was something wrong with me. Upon objective review, I realize that my mother was yelling at me because she was afraid I was going to get hurt, that it’s a normal thing for children to spill things, and that it has no bearing or relation to my essential competence or value as a person. In other words, it highlighted how I had interpreted events and memories to suit my existing convictions, rather than be open to changing those convictions based on the facts. If my mind is like a courtroom, then I act more like a courtroom lawyer who selects and arranges facts to support my predetermined guilt or innocence, rather than like the impartial jury coming to a conclusion based on the facts. In theory, once I understand this, I can readjust my interpretations of people and events not only in the past but in the present. As a result, my thoughts, feelings, and actions are now in accord with reality.
This program was not the Answer, the Cure, the Fix I was looking for, but through it, and with the help of my fellow Program travelers, I began to understand that there might be more than one way to interpret my experiences. This was a revelation which I spent the next six years exploring.
In England I had taken mostly literature classes, Victorian and modern literature, and had found that I loved English literature. Upon my return to Boulder for the first of my two senior years, I declared English literature my major. I have never regretted that decision. I loved English literature because it was full of meaning, it addressed the difficulties, paradoxes, conundrums, and puzzles of life through stories, rather than indirectly through business, economics, psychology, or the sciences. Literature is essentially composed of stories, and I love stories, especially complicated ones. By complicated I don’t mean twisting and turning plots like a thriller or a mystery, but complicated in the sense of ambiguous and subtle, where right and wrong are not so easily determined, where individual will does not always overcome circumstance or external forces, where good as we understand it does not always prevail.
I loved literature because it helped me to understand my world, and as a literature major I got to read really good books every day, discuss what I had read, and write about it. Hunter had said that the only value of going to college is that it gives a person four years to read. Hunter was probably satisfied with my choice of a major.
On the front steps of my apartment in Boulder, Colorado, 1988
I graduated summa cum laude with a degree in literature in 1988. Hunter made it to the graduation ceremony this time, along with Sandy, Deb, and Maria. I don’t know what it took to get him there, but I was very grateful and am still.
SEVEN
GETTING STRAIGHT: AGES 24 TO 30
The ashram—Jennifer—The burning of the ham—The Bomb—The wedding—“I never liked you anyway.”
HST TIMELINE
1988 Generation of Swine (compilation of San Francisco Examiner columns) published.
1989 Hunter awarded New York Library’s “Literary Lion” award.
1990 “99 Days” trial (Gail Palmer-Slater accuses Hunter of attacking her).
Songs of the Doomed published.
1991 Hunter covers the Roxanne and Peter Pulitzer trial in Palm Beach.
Proposes and gets a book contract for Polo Is My Life.
1992 Clinton runs for president, Hunter an unofficial advisor to the campaign.
1994 Better Than Sex published.
DURING COLLEGE I had a part-time job at a local desktop publishing company. When I graduated, I started working full-time there, and started doing technical art on the computer for math textbooks. In 1990, I had decided to spend a few months at a yoga ashram in Massachusetts.
The ashram was called Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the heart of the Berkshires. It offered a number of programs, from a day to a couple of months, in different aspects of yoga. It was moderately expensive, and catered, for the most part, to reasonably well-off New Englanders. However, it was also an ashram, though this was somewhat hidden from the regular guests. It had been started and was run by a fellow named Amrit Desai, who was the spiritual leader, and was staffed by residents. Some had been with Gurudev, as he was known to his devotees, for many years, while others stayed for a year or so. Like a monastery, there was a Rule that all the residents lived under, which included a vow of celibacy for all unmarried residents. They had an internship program, in which a person could live at the ashram for three or four months at no cost in return for full-time labor. Interns lived the life of an ashram resident, getting up at five a.m. for morning yoga, working at their assigned tasks during the day, attending evening devotional services, and taking part in the religious celebrations. I signed up for the internship and arrived in the summer. I was assigned to the kitchen crew, where my job was to wash dishes, serve meals, clean, and do other duties as assigned.
I enthusiastically committed myself to the lifestyle, aided by the knowledge that it was only for four months. I practiced yoga every morning, half asleep, I sang at satsang and chanted Om with three hundred other people. I chewed each bite of my food three hundred times before swallowing, bowed to Gurudev, followed the Rule, and was in general a most devoted and willing novitiate.
The internship was called Spiritual Lifestyle Training, or SLT, and SLT interns were encouraged to dedicate themselves fully to the lifestyle for the duration of their stay. We were discouraged from spending much time off the grounds, and the schedule, which consisted of working seven days a week with two half days off, made it impossible to go for more than a few hours. On my half days I would ride my bicycle along the rolling and winding roads of the Berkshires, through tiny towns, have a snack of ice cream or pancakes, and then ride back to the center. The countryside was stunning, not unlike England. It was very lush, with many, many trees, small lakes and ponds, lovely old farmhouses, barns, and churches, tiny cemeteries from the 1800s on narrow back roads, and enough sun to keep away the gloom, yet not so much that I didn’t appreciate it deeply when it came out bright and clear. My work crew was headed by a very sincere, gentle, and quiet young man named Anup, who was among the tiny group who had taken a lifelong vow of obedience and celibacy, just as Catholic monks and nuns, after a trial period, commit themselves to the life of obedience and chastity. He had given away all his possessions when he came to Kripalu, and his room consisted of little more than a small altar to Gurudev, a few simple clothes, and a few photos. He didn’t even have a mattress, but preferred to sleep on the carpeted floor with a thin blanket. He was one of the calmest, most sincere, and most peaceful people I have ever met. He was technically my manager, though that word completely misrepresents the situation.
Anup treated work as a spiritual path, and the members of his crew as novices to be mentored, and this made all the difference. Anup encouraged us to look at our jobs as service rather than drudgery, and to use it as an opportunity to practice acceptance, and to find through acceptance, grace. If Anup had not believed it himself, this would have been inexcusable bullshit to feed us, but he was completely sincere, and his sincerity dispelled my cynicism and doubts. It was hard work—at lunch I would head straight for my bunk in the dormitory and instantly fall asleep for a half hour—but I never resented it, never felt that it was below me, that as a smart, college-educated, and by god, honors graduate, I should be doing some work mo
re meaningful and challenging. I attribute this to Anup’s sincerity and to his example, and to the power of a group committed to a common goal and view of reality.
All of us interns took his challenge, though he didn’t present it as one. Each morning we would crowd into Anup’s tiny office next to the kitchen and talk about the practicalities of the day and who was assigned to what job, and then Anup would give us a lesson, usually a reading or a reflection. We would meditate for a few minutes, and then join in a quiet communal Om, before heading off to crank up the dishwashing machine, a giant industrial dishwasher, dryer, and conveyer belt that took up a significant chunk of the commercial kitchen and required six or eight people to run it. It was named “Brother Lawrence,” after the monk who found grace while washing dishes at his monastery.
One day I was on my lunch break, sitting outside on the kitchen loading dock. Perhaps I had talked to Hunter recently, perhaps I was reflecting on something he had done or said that angered me, when it struck me, and it did strike me like a thing from outside, that the only way that I would have any peace with my father, the only way I would have any kind of satisfying relationship, was if I made an effort to move toward him, rather than wait for him to stop or at least moderate his craziness with me. At the same time I understood that this meant accepting, on a deep and real level, that he was not going to change. He would not stop drinking every day, he would not stop snorting cocaine, he would not restrain himself from going into rages, demanding to be the center of attention, and having unrealistic expectations of those around him. He would not call me more often, or write me more letters, or tell me he loved me. What he had been, what he was, he would continue to be. If I wanted to be closer to him, I had to move. This concept of acceptance was very familiar to me from the Twelve-Step program, and I had been thinking and writing in my journal about Hunter quite a lot at Kripalu. This day, though, the insight took root in my heart rather than my head. I sat on the loading dock reflecting on this wisdom, surprised by the suddenness of the insight.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 13