Chapter 1
Mantras For The Modern Man
Last year I lost my job.
I went bald.
My wife left me.
And then my dog died.
I have to tell you something. That is not the truth. Not at all.
The truth is I believe my wife still loves me albeit in her own strange and often disapproving way. My dog is alive and she sure loves me when I feed her. And my hair in hanging in with surprising resilience and color for a man of my age.
That leaves one more subject to cover. Employment. I did not lose my job. The truth is I left it. That is when my strange and unexpected journey began as I left the dysfunctional womb of business ownership and joined the aimless wanderings of the zombie legions of the unemployed. Embarked on a personal odyssey deep into nothing exacerbated by the realities of a never-ending global recession.
My equally unintentional voyage of unintended personal discovery began 12 months later on an unseasonably warm July day in 2009 when she who works ridiculously hard each and every day came home early from work, something equally unexpected. She who is always so well dressed in her well cut for success grey Armani suit and beige creamy just right tight silk blouse found me sprawled across the couch. I was watching Sports Center, lounging comfortably in torn blue Adidas three striped stretchy pants, a faded grey Giants 1989 Western Division Champions T-shirt, no shoes and a healthy three day growth showing more and more grey each and every day. I was tossing liver flavored buddy biscuits to faithful white dog Kelly, commanding her to ‘go deep'. I was concentrating hard, hoping that with the right amount of training the dog would one day run a proper post pattern. Kelly was making good progress catching the treats and the spiral I put on those babies was becoming quite tight. Unfortunately the last one of those spirals hit my wife in the forehead and bounced off onto the hardwood floor with a soft clunk as she came into the living room providing an exclamation point to the scene.
Sensing doom the dog did a 180 and ran off towards the kitchen tail tucked between her legs forgetting all about the biscuit. I should have too.
Wife was neither impressed nor amused by the scene playing out in our living room at 3:30 pm on Wednesday afternoon. She did not come in the room. Just stood there and stared at me with a tightly drawn expression across her bright red lips and I knew what was in store. Her look said it all, no words necessary. After a period of uncomfortable silence there would surely be trouble.
I didn’t even try to mutter a feeble “Hi dear.” So hoping against hope I nonchalantly looked her way and offered up a tentative yet hopeful smile. She didn’t return it. I could swear I smelled ozone.
After a few moments we exchanged a very perfunctory greeting of quiet hellos. Without hesitation she let it all cut loose as she launched into an articulate, surprisingly emotionally charged and pointed speech about my life and the lack thereof. In her succinct northern style she did not raise her voice or change her tone. Believe me there was no need to do so as she honed in on my lack of progress in finding work and increasing time spent at home doing nothing. She bluntly asked me “when I was going to get my ass off of the couch and leave the house again.” I had no reply and shrugged my shoulders sort of lazily in sort of response. Not a good idea. She came as close to yelling as she ever does. "If you hope to join us in the outside world again, maybe you should try setting foot in it once in a while."
Damn, she was pitching high and tight.
Her comments hurt. Hurt a lot. I felt like emotional shit and this romp in you should be ashamedville didn’t help me feel any better. I wanted to crawl into the crevices of the couch where Kelly hid her emergency kibble stash.
