Isolation Army

I like to fool myself into believing there’s a nobility that comes from spending inordinate amounts of time alone. The human brain has this uncanny way of rationalizing just about anything.

As much as I hate to admit it, I do my best work alone. Always have. It all stems from this pretty crazy terror I had as a child of being abandoned. My big recurring dream as a kid featured my mother having to leave me behind forever on some mysterious trip. Oh man, I would just lose it after those nightmares.

When the nightmare finally came true, it snapped me out of a roughly two-year patch of a sort of forced isolation I’m sure I’ve alluded to here before. But it allowed me to hole up in my room and draw up a plan. A really good plan.

I still kind of marvel at that guy. I mean, what a fucking mess. And to actually put one foot in front of the other and march your sorry ass through the perilous journey that took you exactly where you wanted to be in the first place is an accomplishment that can never be underestimated.

Then there were the two years almost to the fucking day spent in (REDACTED). Yeah, the first year or so was the stuff of instantly legendary MTV reality shows no doubt.

But so much less attention is paid to that last eight months or so. Living in that studio apartment on the northernmost tip of town. Locked in a futile battle with a creeping army of cockroaches (those goddamned bugs let me tell you…), now that was doing a motherfucking bid right there for real doe. Niggas say what.

Everyday I would trudge to that soul-crushing ‘job.’ And I would set about doing the task appointed to me. Oh, and I ate. A lot. Combined with the non-stop sitting on my ass, let’s just say I wasn’t at my physical peak by any means.

I joke about it now, but I’ll always remember the day Mama Universe blasted me in the shoulder with a .22 and broke a couple of ribs with a lead pipe. Deep winter. AKA mid-January. I’d left work and was walking towards the train station. It was bitterly cold even for this notoriously frigid burg. I was wrapped head to toe in a good percentage of my wardrobe at the time in defense. I was sporting some fashionable wool overcoat. I turned onto (REDACTED) Avenue, and a blast of arctic wind (known by people of my father’s generation as “The Hawk”) stopped me in my tracks. Breathing ceased. Everything slowed down to a blurry not quite halt and tears pooled in my eyes. It was too cold for them to do anything more.

I somehow staggered into the nearest recognizable storefront: Urban Outfitters (oh, the humanity). I stumbled towards a large wall of coats. Pawing through the pile of Gore-Tex and nylon until I found it. The biggest, bulkiest snowboarding coat I could find. Fake fur-lined hood and everything. Made by a company called Drift (they appear to be no more. Huh). That orange-lined beast became my best friend. I threw the useless overcoat in the trash and never looked back.

At work, I posted a page from I’m pretty sure “Los Angeles” magazine. There was a photographer who took pictures of the Pacific coast horizon at different times of the day. He would use really long exposures and get these really rich, shimmering images. There were two such shots stacked on top of each other on the page I posted in my pathetic work cubicle. And I stared at that picture every day, all day. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t stop until I was looking at that very same scene in real life, and that place would be home.

Six months later, I was being put up in a posh Beverly Hills hotel at my new employers’ expense. It was April Fool’s Day. I’ll never forget it. Somewhere, there’s a folder with that crumpled magazine page still in it. Soon, I was standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and that image was so fucking alive it brought more tears to my eyes. The good kind this time.

And it goes on. Once again, I find myself begrudgingly doing another stint of totally unexpected isolation (isn’t it always though?). As always, my mind is working overtime, all the time, furiously figuring out an escape plan. I though I had a clear lane, but that was just an illusion (AKA one night stand). There was a pretty sweet conjugal visit in there, too. But this is a real one. FML, as the kidz would say.

Which only means one thing. I gotta set the focus dial towards the desired destination, fuel up and lift off. The Mothership doesn’t run on just happy thoughts and fierce determination. What did they say in my brother’s day? 

Ah, yes:

“Gas, grass or ass. No one rides for free.”