At 33, my dream stopped at the threshold of the cold, dark brown cement floors and the dirty, beige walls of government housing. It was a blatant reminder of my drug and alcohol dependence and my failures.
I worked at the local paper, The Middlesex News, and was out day and night chasing stories for $18,000 a year. I spent some for food, rent, clothing and cigarettes. The rest I spent on my dream inducers, drugs.
From my viewpoint, everyone around me was making good money. My friends were living in nice apartments or were happily married and owned homes. They had the “perfect” one boy, one girl family. Some didn’t have kids, and the world was full of possibilities.
Self-pity allowed me a hopeless view. My only visions through the haze of drunkenness were the smiles of my toothless six-year-old son and the concerned, fatherly expressions of my twelve-year-old. A state of bewilderment choked off most of my rational thought.
I felt like success only happened to someone else. That only someone else could get the promotion and make the money I could only dream of. I felt that only someone else could buy a house or take their children on a vacation. I was tired of scamming my sons by lecturing them on the value of being an individual - like when I couldn’t afford to buy name brand clothing, being an individual meant they were dressed differently, in the cheaper brands that I could afford.
The darkness at the end of the tunnel had kept any glint of hope from my sight and then George propelled me, unwittingly and cruelly, into the light. George was another man-friend that I allowed to enter my world in the continued search to define myself. When I was five, the lines to my identity had been smudged. An adult relative had snatched my self and my soul from me, my protests muffled by his hands - one covered my mouth while the other pressed through the soft, fresh tissue between my legs. Then began my search in every man, woman, and child I had contact with for that undefined thing that would make me feel like a good person - like them - void of the secret I held that gnawed at my brain and sucked the marrow from my bones.
I had allowed George to herald himself as my redeemer. He stood with his he-man shoulders hunched over me and said, “I don’t want to be relative to your children. I’m not here to take care of them either.”
He was not the first man friend that ran away from the looming responsibility of caring for my children; their expectation, not mine - but he was the first to say it out loud.
In all the years that had passed since the years of sexual abuse, I never lost my sense of my unworthiness. I allowed George, like all those men before him, to perpetuate it. And then something happened. I do not know where it came from: I got pissed. I telephoned my sister, Roberta (“Berta”), and my girlfriend, Mary Breen, and asked them to come over and help calm my fury.
We sat around talking about what an asshole George was and how I didn’t need him for anything and how I could make it on my own. Then Mary popped up from her seat, her face aglow and said, “Let’s start our own business. We know people who have done it and been successful,” Mary said. “I don’t know why three charmers like us can’t do it. I know I’m sick of not having any money. Lookin’ like an old school marm because I can’t afford new clothes. The kids are brutal. ‘Miss Breen don’t you think you could use a new dress?’” Mary mimicked.
“I feel your pain there,” Berta said.
For me it was comforting to learn that they shared my perception that the economic boom of the 80’s had somehow failed to recognize us.
“I know I’m not making it,” I said. “Hell, I can’t even pay the two hundred dollar rent for this place. The worst is I don’t see it changing the way I’m going. I’m juggling shutoff notices from the phone, the gas, the electric…livin’ on hot dogs and beans and chicken pot pies… damn, saying it out loud is even more depressing.”
We were quiet for a time, each of us building our own dream around the idea. “What’ve we got to lose? Ain’t nothing going to happen different if we don’t try something,” I said.
“I can see us five years from now sitting in our office with our feet up, counting the money,” Mary said.
“Right Mary, after we bust our asses doing Lord only knows what,” Berta said.
“Doesn’t matter what we do, we’re going to get rich doing it,” Mary insisted.
“Yeah, and the first thing I’m going to do is take the kids on vacation, away from here” I said. “I want them to see there’s a whole ‘nother world out there so they don’t get stuck.”
The idea wrapped around us like a warm blanket. Mary sat back in her chair and rested her feet on the coffee table and lifted her Coors Light to toast our business success. I matched her vision licking my thumbs and pretending to count money. Berta was less animated, only offering a tentative “Yeah, sure.” A few hours later we sat comfortably in the wealth gained from our successful venture, whatever it would be. Then they went home and I prepared for the arrival of my sons from playing outside who would be demanding food.
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