It Takes Two

They say what you resist persists--but never did I imagine so persistently.

When I was young I remember very vividly getting mad and locking myself in my room. My mom would always come to the door and ask "What's wrong honey?" and see if I was okay. My response was always one of not opening the door (and maybe telling her to go away) but really, really not wanting her to.

Much of my adult life (and a bunch of my youth) has been an attempt to escape the privilege I was born with. I don't know where I got the idea that being privileged was bad, but I got it. In spades.

First I went to go be a hippy. They were free and knew about love. Had it going on like us "squares" didn't. That period of my life ended in a group house gone bad--with the heat turned off for lack of payment and one of the residents dealing hash out of the house. To escape I literally made a run for the border with my friend George in a rented van.

So hippies were soft, I decided, and set off to be more rock. Less Jorma and more Green River. They, I decided, had it more going on, but weren't so relaxed that nothing was happening. Less pot, more beer.

My housing during this period was a fourplex that could have been the model for the movie Singles. I was a bike messenger and then a graphic designer--at first starving with spray painted door and walls (a huge eight ball and some sort of Egyptian mural) and later, as companies wanted the aestheic, and I had sharpened my chops, traveling, snowboarding and deciding against buying a house because I wasn't sure I wanted to be a landowner--or be responsible for a mortgage.

This period fell apart for me as people started dying, both literally and figuratively, from drugs and alcohol, and as the scene somewhat imploded under the weight of its own success.

And I was not a casual bystander but an active participant. I was as sarcastic as the best of them. Could hang with the most pessimistic. I bought a communist flag.

And I should note that I was still a "good person" the whole time. I did volunteer work, was great with kids, donated money, was politically active. And most if not all of the people I was with were good people as well. I just gave free reign to my shadow side as well. And was trying to live, to survive even, without any faith at all. I thought this is what "the truth" demanded.

It was at this time that I met an angel. His name was Eben. Literally. He was able to freely say things that I was only able to sometimes think. And live things that I had given up on even saying. He scared the shit out of me.

We eventually parted ways but not before he had rekindled in me a way to get past surviving and live again. It was with Eben that I first saw a glimpse that the only two things I absolutely had to do in this life were the two things I had never really thought of: be white and die.

During this time I lived first in my mom's house in Seattle (she lived in Chicago), as one of four renters enjoying a below market rate and then, when it became time to move on (after I finished my book), in an apartment paid for by credit on a loan secured by her.

It was from this apartment that I was sure I would launch my book. I just needed a couple more months.

This whole time it was very apparent to me that I was working on becoming a man while being supported by my family's privilege in a broad sense and gifts and credit in the narrow. As the only models I had for being a man were self-made and ruggedly independent, I had no real way to get at the apparent contradiction I embodied.

Here I was a loving, ranting, strong, weak, crazed, sane artist who needed his mom to keep a roof over his head.

And the more I fought it, the stronger it got. The entire time I had my apartment I looked for work. I took the test to be a bus driver, asked to wait tables, told people I was a marketing consultant, tried to hustle up graphic design gigs, started a nutrition consultancy, looked for non-profit work, sent letters asking to be an apartment manager--I networked, cold called, pounded the pavement and sent out resumes.

When I reached the end of my $800 a month rope, I was still fighting and decided to leap. I tried to move to New York City, where I'd have to be tough, have to hustle--where it would really be make or break. It was then that I received a loving shot across my bow that felt like a hammer to the head: NO!

The eviction notice scared me straight. I wasn't in starting afresh mode, but recovery mode. I was spent: emotionally, physically (I had lost 20 pounds and only started at 155), mentally and spiritually. I moved to Chicago.

The move in with mom was only going to be temporary, until I got a job. And boy did I hustle to get a job. I was 37 and living with my mom. I thought I had written the next great American novel--I thought I had stood up like few ever do. Why was I falling asleep on the couch at 11 in the morning?

I'll get into the details of my return to health some other time, but suffice it to say I not only had to slow down emotionally and mentally but also keep going. I was used to doing one or the other--either collapsing or getting twisted out--but learning to manage restful resting and productive moving without the despair and mania that spurred me on proved a significant challenge.

At this point my labor was manual. Jobs that my family steered my way: house painting, laying a patio, fixing stuff up, etc. I tried to stop, or at least slow down my creative desires but whatever force it is that wakes us up in the middle of the night kept teasing me: paint. Play music. Build a studio. Your book is being discovered.

In some sense I was getting stronger but in others it felt like the white knuckles were getting even bigger. More debt.

It's appealing even now, but I did not come to write a sob story or avoid the vulnerable truth. The truth is I just had to cop to it. I had to accept that I wanted help. And accept it. Say yes. Enjoy it. Ask for it even. I had to learn how to take.

Take you say? How could love be about taking?

That's what I said. Which is why it took me 10 years to get to this point.