It Used to Be

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 31, Verses 6 & 7

"Hard liquor is for sick men at the brink of death, 

and wine for those in deep depression."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

It used to be, if you asked me why I believed in the death penalty, I could tell you.  And I would tell you.  I wouldn't just tell you about it, I'd write about it, too.  I wrote about it, a lot.  It's recorded.  It is on record.  

Now, it all seems like somebody else's thoughts and words.  And bile.  And animus.  And violence.  I'm in there, somewhere, of course.  I'm in there somewhere, floating around, circling the drain, watching for cues, thumbing my nose at the memory of myself.  Back then-- way back then.  

I don't believe in the death penalty anymore.  I've seen what it does-- I mean, I haven't seen somebody being put to death by the state-- but I've seen how it martyrs people, I've seen how it turns people's brains to yogurt.  If you read Monday's post, or the book I wrote when I was in college, well, you know what I'm talking about.

You know.

It used to be, if you asked me why I like to wear ties and what I call "Tier 1 pants" (trousers that could pass for suit pants, typically necessitating dry-cleaning that I wouldn't be caught dead spending money on) and dress shirts, I could tell you.  I'd prattle on about self-respect and dignity and how my grandfather was a haberdasher and all of that muck.  But, really, I don't know why.  I have a hundred ties.  Maybe two hundred.  There's around a dozen bowties.  And sometimes I look at them and I don't know what they're doing in my room.  Why do I wear ties and not bowling shirts, or flannel shirts?  Now, it's just what I do.  I wear ties to the beach.  

Gee, that's silly.

Used to be I could tell you why I liked sad folk songs-- I could tell you why if you asked me.  I'd talk about how they're moving and they're poignant and about how their stories of sorrow or loss or struggle speak to me, and about how they're more lasting than, I don't know-- than that other stuff.  Now, if you asked me why I cry when I hear Dar Williams's "When I Was a Boy", I'd probably just take a sip of coffee and change the subject; to the weather, or the bomb, or the gumbo.  Let's talk about something else, cuz my mom and I, we'd always talk, and I'd pick flowers everywhere that we'd walk.

But you knew that.

Used to be I knew why I wanted to be a cop.  I'd tell you a story about-- I don't know-- something, anything to explain it.  To make sense of the most irrational desire of my life.  I'd explain it away for you until it almost made sense, until it almost made your brow stop furrowing.  I'd talk until you left me the fuck alone about it.  I'd talk and talk and talk until I almost understood it myself.  I'd tell you that it started in high school, or college, or the months after college, after she'd broken up with me and after the book and after I waved to Charles after getting that stupid piece of paper wearing that oversized trash bag, but, a couple months ago I was looking at pictures that my father took of me back when I was nine or ten.  I'm dressed in dark pants, a dark blue polo shirt and a child's-sized police hat.  I have cheap metal cuffs and I'm doing various police poses-- talking on an imaginary radio, pointing off in the distance while squinting my eyes (probably at the direction a "suspect fled on foot"), even cuffing an imaginary suspect up against my father's white Oldsmobile Ciera.  There's a badge on my chest, with a piece of black mourning tape over its center.  

I don't know.  I really just don't know.

Used to be I could tell you why I don't drink.  Why I've never had a drink.  Why.  People think I'm in recovery, but I'm not even that advanced.  I'm so entrenched in my own bullshit I don't even have the slightest idea what I'd be in recovery from.  Maybe I don't drink because I'm frightened.  Maybe it's because I think alcohol is evil, that people who drink behave like idiots.  Maybe I don't think I need any help behaving like an idiot.  I've got that covered pretty much.  Maybe I don't want to be out of control.  Life's pretty out of control as it is.

Isn't it?

Used to be I could tell you anything-- even if you didn't ask.  Now, I don't know what to tell you.  I could have told you, once, very clearly in writing.  I was always afraid of speaking, because I never knew what was going to come out.  I'm still like that, but now it's metastasized to infect not only my speech but my writing.  I still don't know what I'm talking about.  Or why.  I don't know who I'm addressing, who is out there, why I'm writing or why you're reading.  But I suppose all I can say it that I like that you're here.  Here with me.  "Stay with me," I used to say to my mother so she wouldn't leave my bedside as I lay there, awash in anxiety and fear-- irrational and sane-- and she would stay.  She'd stay with me.  

And I always knew why. 

You Can Wear a Tie Under the Robes, Mommy

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 28, Verse 4

"To complain about the law is to praise wickedness.  To obey the law is to fight evil."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

I've wanted to be a cop.  Went into the academy in 2002, washed out.  The seven year itch (SERIOUSLY! IT REALLY WAS SEVEN YEARS LATER!  WOW!) set in and I took some county police tests and, well, you know, it didn't go so well.  The FBI didn't want me either, which was especially sad for me, because the FBI combines three of my affinities: suits, overcoats, and, I guess, law enforcement.  

I tried to become a lawyer, too, a long time ago.  Fresh out of college.  Again-- suits, overcoats, and the law beckoned and, this time, it seemed to make sense.  Nice Jewish boys from the suburbs don't become cops, but they definitely do become lawyers.  Finally, THIS was a career move my mother's son could make that would be appropriate for her to talk about to her patrons at the public library.

Alas, it was not to be.  I got the LSAT's lowest possible passing grade.  Widener Law School offered me a provisional acceptance and, like someone who REALLY wanted to become a lawyer, I wrote them a letter refusing, in no uncertain terms, their tepid acceptance.  

When I was a boy, I was fond of watching Judge Joseph Albert Wapner on "The People's Court" (he's still alive, at a thoroughly judicial 93, in case you were wondering) and I had youthful aspirations of becoming a judge.  I had all the necessary qualifications, I reasoned, as a nine-year-old.  I knew when people were lying to me, I was quickwitted and had no interest in listening to anybody.  What more could the American justice system ask for?  Plus, I looked good in black.  

"And you can wear a tie under the robes, Mommy, and it'll show," I said at the kitchen table once while my mother was making dinner and probably considering suicide, "because the robes are V-necks."

We weren't a very law-and-order type of house.  My father was kind of a rebel growing up.  He grew up like many Israeli Jews of that vintage-- hyper-religious.  But, at age 16, "I threw my yarmulke into the sea and said, 'Fuck this!'"  (Well, he said it in Hebrew, but I don't know how to say that in Hebrew, much less type it.)  My mom rebelled, too, getting married and pregnant at a very young age and splitting from her parents.  We weren't taught about Johnny Law and reverently imbued with respect for things like property lines and stop signs.  Yet, somehow, I became very intrigued with laws and the enforcement thereof.  Maybe you might say "obsessed", and I can accept that.  Whereas lots of people in their teens and twenties had problems with authority, I had problems without it.  I instinctively look to ties and suits and graying mustaches for guidance.  And maybe that's why I dress as formally as I do.  Maybe that's how I want to be seen-- as a comforting symbol of direction and surety.  

Which is about as big an illusion as I am capable of conjuring up, because anyone who knows me will freely tell you, as freely as I'm telling you now, that I'm full of shit.

It's funny, though, what a button-down shirt and tie can do for a guy.  One day, when I was maybe in my early twenties, I happened to be taking a train from Philly to Washington.  I was standing in the station, looking particularly, at least I thought, bewildered, when another hapless traveler came up to me and started asking me questions about train schedules.  I thought maybe this guy thought I had Aspergers and had memorized all the arrivals and departures for fun, but then I realized, oh.  I'm wearing a navy blue three-piece suit with a pocket watch chain strung across the vest.  He thinks I work for Amtrak.  

Right.

I love laws.  As someone who has generally very minimal direction in his life, laws tell me what is okay and what is not okay.  I thrive on structure.  I get off on order.  Give me guidelines in explicit lengthy detail, and I might start humping your leg.  I need to know what is okay.  I have to know how not to be a bad boy.  If I don't know, then how will I know?  How will I ever know?  How will I know when to arrive?  How to behave?  How to dress?  How to cross my legs-- like a girl, like a fag, like a guy with big balls?  What do I do?  What do I say?  What isn't right?  I'm funny-- is it okay to be funny?  Can I say this in public?  Is this a word that's only okay for the house, Daddy?  Can I not say that in school?  

Please.  Tell me what to do, and how to do it.  Please.  I'm so scared.

That I'll break the law-- hurt the law-- hurt the spine of the book, the screen on the phone, the plastic coating, the foam insert, the shoulder blade, the flower petal.  I'm frightened, Aunt Em.  I'm very, very frightened.

A women interviewing me for a job this afternoon remarked, trying to be humorous-- I hope-- that, upon reading my resume, she thought to herself, "Now, what does this guy want to be when he grows up?"

Well, obviously a cop, a lawyer, and a judge.  And a writer, too.  But only if I'm allowed to wear a tie.  Where I work, you can't wear a tie.  It's too dangerous.  If it isn't in the employee handbook, it should be.