shit and crazy. drunken blah blah and an unfortunate change in plans

What a mess. Crazy wandering through uptown after being wined and dined by some curators from a big art museum while my dad is in a hospital somewhere in Montana being cut open. All I want to do right now is call my ex-girlfriend, but then history reminds me all too quickly why that wouldn’t help any. There are so many beautiful women walking the streets of Manhattan, it seems like one of them should be able to read my mind and see how badly I need a pair of warm arms to fall into. Why does it always seem to go like this? Days that could be both the best and worst days of my life? I am sitting in a meeting with some people who might help me with my movie and things seem to be going pretty well. Then I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket and glance at the caller ID and see that it is my Dad calling on his cell phone. I figure it’s just him calling to say he is back home from his fishing trip in Montana, so I let it ring through and go to voice mail. After the meeting and on my way to my second important meeting of the day, a dinner date with the art museum curators, I check the message. It’s my Dad, he is still in Montana, at a hospital getting ready to have emergency surgery for a blockage in his intestine. He sounds awful and is clearly in a lot of pain. I quickly call back and my step mom answers and says he is in surgery. She explains that my dad woke up this morning feeling terrible. It got worse and worse and they went to the hospital, and now he is in surgery getting parts of his intestine removed. My step mom assures me everything will be okay, but she is obviously freaked out too. I get off the phone just as I approach the museum, and soon find myself at a fancy restaurant drinking fancy wine, and then drinking too much fancy wine. I am amazed at how easily I am able to switch back into business mode. I tell them about my screenplay, I tell them about my installation, they seem very interested and excited about both and we laugh and enjoy the wine together. Eventually the bill comes and I get a glance and see that the wine was $19 a glass. “Don’t worry, it’s on the museum,” says one disgruntled curator. We say our goodbyes and I am lost in uptown, and the thought hits me that it is possible that I let my dad’s last phone call go to voice mail.
What am I doing here? The crazy people who talk to themselves on the street suddenly make more sense. I look up and see a stone statue of jesus looking down at me from the overarching entrance of some nearly ancient cathedral, illuminated by the soft glow of the fluorescent lights of a Mister Softee ice cream truck that is parked just off the sidewalk. The full moon is rising over Rockefeller Center; tourists are taking pictures of it with flashes, pictures that surely will never come out. But they have hope, and they are smiling, so I take one to just to fit in. If I had a car I would just start driving to Montana. My dad lives in Maine, I live in Oregon. It’s a cruel joke that this happens while we are both flip-flopped on each other’s coasts. I wonder what a cab fair would be to Bozeman.
The F Train is my new love. For only $2 she’ll take me home. She never says no, but sometimes I have to wait for a while. I just couldn’t take the streets of Manhattan anymore. A homeless guy was begging for money and I gave him everything in my wallet, with the exception of a ten-dollar bill that I knew I needed for at least one more drink. A man on the subway wears a military uniform and sports a button reading “Hitler didn’t need search warrants either.”
Almost ten years ago, my Grr-Dad fell ill and was dying. He was in the hospital and going fast, and everyone in the family was on their way to Southern California to say goodbye. That week I had my first kind-of-important film screening at the Portland Art Museum and my dad assured me that my Grr-Dad would want me to stay for the show. I booked my ticket for that night and Vanessa Renwick drove me to the airport at top speed just after the screening. I barely caught my flight, but two hours later I was in LA. I took a cab to the hospital and found my dad waiting for me out front. “Matthew, your Grr-Dad is dead.” He hadn’t started crying at that point, but after saying that particular arrangement of words he couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. Saying it made it real. My Grr-Dad, my Dad’s Dad, had died half an hour earlier, while I was on the airplane.
Now I am in New York, doing things that feel important but probably aren’t all that important. I don’t think my dad is dying. This isn’t that bad of a thing, but it is really scary and we still don’t know how bad it could be. The subway just stops in the middle of the tunnel and I hope it isn’t broken. Standing still always makes the anxiety much heavier. I wonder if there is a power outage or a terrorist attack, but soon we start moving again. I just need to get back to my fake apartment and make some calls.
The person at the airline that I need to talk to about changing my ticket is only available during normal business hours. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to arrange my transportation to Montana. Thank god for the ten-dollar bill in my wallet, that will get me three or four Schaffer’s down at the ol’ Bait and Tackle (depending on how generous a tipper I am). The bar crowd tonight is much livelier than it was on Monday, and I realize that I will be leaving much sooner than anticipated and this might be goodbye to my new favorite fake neighborhood. Tonight is one of those nights you just assume get mugged or hit by a car or seduced or abducted by aliens. Some sort of intense reality shift that is more intense then the current, real reality. I just want to get lost in some other thoughts for a few minutes. This entire summer has been a summer of trying to create distractions. This trip to New York is really just a distraction, my life has become one giant charade… if I really really really look like I’m having fun than I must be having fun. The search for a distraction so profound that it causes you to forget your dreams and ambitions, overcome your fears and ditch your morals. It has worked for some people I know, but I can’t seem to get it to work for me. Alien abduction sounds nice, especially if they could drop me off in Montana when they are finished with me.
It is times like this that I really hate being an only child from a broken marriage. I’ve been to all of my grandparent’s funerals and watched my parents rely on the mutual support of their siblings. My dad and his brother, my mom and her brother and sister. I’ve always secretly wished I had an older sister, and I have never had the urge to call her more than I do right now. I’ve got a mom and a step dad and a dad and a step mom, all of whom are growing older. And me. That’s my family. It was great as a kid during Christmas when I’d get two sets of presents, but now I am scared to death about the fact that I have no family members remotely close to my age. I am too selfish, and not responsible enough for this.
When my mom’s mom died, her brother and sister were both there and they supported each other in roles that had clearly existed since they were young children. When my dad’s dad died, my dad played the part of the older brother, dealing with much of the funeral arrangements while my uncle spent extra energy comforting my grandmother. When my grandmother died, my dad tried to play the role of the responsible older brother, but at a point lost it and completely broke down. But my uncle, my dad’s little brother, was there to help him back up, and together they were able to get through the hardship. In each case, I remember how my dad and his brother or my mom and her brother and sister came together and supported each other in ways that I am afraid I will never know for myself.
The girl who I was exchanging glances with the other night is here, but she is talking to some other dude and doesn’t seem to notice me. I never did talk to her that night, and I figure now it is ridiculously too late. Besides, I doubt I could convince her to be my surrogate older sister anyhow, and if I started speaking to her it would probably be a total disaster. “Hi, I’m Matt, I’ve had too much to drink, those art curators ordered lots of wine for us, and oh yeah, I just found out my dad is having emergency surgery somewhere in Montana. He called me but I let it go to voice mail. I’m totally freaking out. What did you say your name was?”