The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Twelve

On the eleventh day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me:

Twelve Numerical Milestones
Eleven Months of Memories
Ten fingers and ten toes
Nine (ten, actually) Gheorghemas albums
Eight Bud Lights with Andy
Seven Book Categories for Reading
Six Cylinders for Shlara
Five Givings of Thanks
Four Badass Women
Three(+) Decades of Love’s Labor
Two Things You’re Needing
And a Fat Guy in a Sweet T

Welcome to another edition of the Twelfth Day of Gheorghemas. Day 12, like the Yeti, or his North American cousin the Sasquatch, has been rather elusive the past couple of years, in part because I've had a lot to say and yet nothing. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it go:

I'm not the only Gheorghe: The Blog staffer to be divorced.  In fact, I'm one of four. I am, however, the only one to get divorced after having children, and I'm also the only one still divorced. It's been . . . a journey.

Recently, after a couple of handmade vodka drinks, I explained semi-seriously to some good friends that even I have periodic moments of reflection, and a particular image frequently enters my mind. It's this: I once had this beautiful meal on a plate: my life in culinary metaphor. And that I took this delectable, would-be thoroughly satisfying plate of food and dropped it. Down a flight of stairs. Into a basement. Where the plate shattered, sending shards of ceramic and sustenance into dusty corners, never to be retrieved and reassembled.

It was, even delivered with my standard stupid smile, a dramatic and depressing proclamation. But it's how I feel -- sometimes.  Certainly not all the time. And certainly not never. I routinely acknowledge that I've been handed quite a lot of good in my life, from my socioeconomic station to my clever wit to my dashing good looks and debonair (see wit, clever). I am not feeling sorry for myself. I'm just recognizing that I have thrown a pretty good life into the thresher at least once, maybe multiple times. And I feel like I epitomize Dion's B-side, "The Squanderer."

At least until now...

 * * * * * *

For most Day 12's that have hit the blogwaves, I have polished off Gmas with "Twelve Appreciations." This year is a little bit of a pivot thereon, incorporating a dozen numerical milestones that mean something to me and interspersing it all with how I got here.

So . . . I got married at the ripe old age of 26, when I knew neither who I was nor what I wanted. Genius. When I expressed some indigestion at the prospect of my looming wedding date to a trusted family member, I was offered this piece of Confucian wisdom: "She checks all the boxes. You're immature. Don't screw it up."  Not blaming anyone, but . . . thanks.

Anyway, she was and is a truly great person, but there was some already loose footing on that trip down the aisle. No worries, we had a big party in Richmond and a number of my dudes were there to support me / love company. And later that summer we embarked on the 4th Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip. We had a bunch of dudes make a trip to NC for four years in a row! That's a feat by most people's standards. It would be interesting to see how much further we could take that.

25 Years of the OBFT
Are you kidding me? A quarter of a century of a dudes-only sojourn to a little cottage on the beach that sleeps eight? And we routinely boast 15-20? I cannot accurately convey what the unflinching dedication of my comrades to keep this wagon rolling means to me. It's just the best.

In between fishing trips, the missus and I got up to the devil's business a couple of times, as ol' Evan would say, and I helped to create the two greatest points of vulnerability that could possibly exist in my universe.

17 Years of Being a Father
The Marls saga brought tears to my eyes -- a significantly more common occurrence in my old age -- because as much as I was being honest about the vulnerability part, it's even more true that these two girls represent the most overwhelming joy I could ever experience in all my life. Nothing comes close. They are my reason for being, which candidly translates: they are, in all likelihood, the reason I'm still alive. I just spent four days in Florida with them. When they laugh, usually at me, the world is perfect.

Now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery. Like dressing up as Abe Lincoln!

14 Years as Abe Lincoln
Hard to believe I made such a ridiculous trip back in time/up I-95 for so long. I was a fat guy portraying the skinniest president ever. (Obama is second, maybe?)  I was a young guy playing a much older president and I had to dye my fucking beard to make it look younger. And I left a popular beach region on a holiday weekend to sweat to the oldies in DC. Full disclosure... Abe partied all night long before traveling up to the parade on no sleep more than once. Super swell idea. No more. The final curtain (insert Ford's Theater joke here, yuk yuk) has fallen.

So . . . I had a pretty full life going on back then by most accounts. And I filled in my happiness gaps (the gappiness) with excursions like...

6 Nations
Every February/March, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, and Italy square off in a round-robin rugby tournament for bragging rights and some sort of trophy. It's great fun. The Six Nations. I went in 2000 with 12 hoodlum ruggers from American U, several of whom I knew from work. Reykjavik and Cardiff have never been the same.  One month from today, more than 10 guys from our college posse will fly to Dublin to watch Ireland host England in the marquee match on the tournament. Hell yes.  I'm stunned we pulled it off. I'm more stunned flights from Dulles to Dublin were $319 on Icelandair. I'll be even more stunned if I make it back in one piece. I appreciate the old Irish expression, "may the road rise up to meet you" but not so fast that you break your face, lad.

Meanwhile, the single most consistent enhancement of my life in times good and bad has been music, something chronicled on this blog by many of us ad infinitum. Starting in 2006, I started to issue a year-end CD to keep my musically-inclined-but-not-quite-current friends up on the latest and greatest. 20 from 2006 and it subsequent ilk were tons of fun for me and well-received.  Damn the technology! CD's are dodos, and with their extinction went my outlet for fun. Yay, technology! Via Spotify I can issue dueling playlists: 20 from 2018 and 100 from 2018. F anyone who says there's no good new music any more.

20 / 100 Songs from This Year Worth a Listen

Back to the story. We moved back to my hometown of Norfolk in 2005. By all metrics, a great move for everyone. As Buffett sang before he cliff-dove into awfulness, I Have Found Me a Home.

But that didn't solve the marital stuff, and in 2009, I blew it up. People assumed I was a maniac, because it didn't make sense from the curbside view. Whitney was going off half-cocked again, so to speak, and it was neither fruitful nor possible to convey the thought and pain that went into that.  Nor the pain that came from it, both for me and everyone involved.  Agony not worth documenting. The three words that best describe it are as follows, and I quote: "Stink, stank, stunk."

So you dust yourself off and try again. I leapt into the waiting tentacles arms of the one who would be wife #2. It's mean and a tiny bit unfair to lob grenades her way now, but let me just say this . . . sometimes your comeuppance comes in the form of a mate, and that can be humbling, humiliating, horrible. For my countless flaws, I do try to follow the "I shit the bed, now I must lie in it" (or something akin) adage, and so I set about making myself happy in other ways.

After a disastrous experience working for the Devil herself for 12 months, 3 weeks, and 1 day, I found myself unemployed and searching for meaningful, not just gainful employment. For six long months.  These were not the salad days, as they say.

7 Years of a Dream Job
The good fortune that follows me came through hugely in 2011. I landed at a nonprofit that serves people with disabilities. I'm the Director of Business Development, finding jobs for this underserved but amazing subset of our population every day. It's fucking awesome. I could talk about this for hours, but let me say this: I am awed just about every day there. I get to help people who've been passed over. I get to go to Richmond and Capitol Hill and advocate for them. I gave a rather animated, 15-minute speech in the Virginia Capitol three weeks ago, and the kudos I got from senators, delegates, people in the industry, and even people who fundamentally disagree with my argument brought (more) tears to my eyes. I love it. We are an ass-kicking machine of a nonprofit with a $47 million annual budget and over 1,000 employees on 18 federal government contracts and countless commercial ventures serving people with disabilities of all kinds. Including cool-assed shit like this (I either had a bender the night prior or just look like it, so please forgive):

My job and my daughters were the bright spots of joy in an otherwise depraved and joyless time. I was behaving like I thought I was playing bass on Aerosmith's Live Bootleg Tour in '78. Having abandoned a home that was sadly lacking but stable, and having sacrificed a lot of time with the lights of my life who needed me . . . for a life that checked no boxes except a bit of Hugh Hefner and maybe some Sam Kinison . . . well, that needs some heavy supplementing with good old-fashioned happy stuff.  Enter ORF Rock!

4 Years of Being a College Radio Disc Jockey
I love ORF Rock. I love Les Coole and Penny Baker. My OCD loves that my lovely co-host gives me control of the track lists. Okay, my real dream job is this...

And so that time of my life went. Until it could not go any more. In September of 2016, I blew it up.  Again.  The maniacs.

I then went pretty dormant for a while, by design. For one thing, there are few things more financially ruinous than divorce. I was broker than broke. Moving money around I didn't have to stay one step ahead of pauper's prison.  All my doing.  The plate down the stairs. To put it in a very gauche perspective, a decade earlier we had sold a house for seven figures and now I was scrounging for coins on my car floor to buy lunch.

Here's one way to make some money, though! Let yourself go in an era of utter decadence where there's neither a cheeseburger nor a pale ale that doesn't have your name on it.  Be a slovenly pig for years in the ultimate sandbag . . .

30 Pounds in 3 Months
Then meander innocently into a bet with Marls and Buck that you can get down to 230 pounds by Thanksgiving. Make $230 off each of them! It's a cinch!

Okay, since this post is full of way-too-full disclosures . . . my manorexic father had already bet me a far larger sum to reach that identical goal AND offered to pay for gym and trainer fees. Sorry, boys, I had to go for the con.  But I did reach that goal. And that bet was settled 13 months ago and the weight's still off and I am now paying my own freight at the gym and still going. So there's that.

That helped my self-esteem in some down times, I do have to say. And down was down not just for my own self-inflicted wounds, but also some family stuff.  I think I disclosed along the way that my dad was diagnosed in early 2016 with Stage 4 lung cancer.  Tumors in lymph nodes and nasty shit. In April of that year his sisters came from North Carolina and Hawaii respectively to pay their last respects . . . and then he miraculously got better. (I just knocked on wood 73 times, one for every year he's been alive.) Immunotherapy (Opdivo was his brand) saved his life. Like, really fast. It's a fucking miracle serum (for some people with some cancers) and should be produced and dispensed freely to all. I already feel pretty bad about the friends I love who've lost their nearest and dearest to the Big Casino. So unfair. Fuck cancer and anything that stands in the way of anyone getting this treatment.

And I will always be grateful for this chapter of my story, not only because it saved my dad's life, but because the process majorly closed a gap between my father and me -- one that had been pretty wide and had been so since . . . wait for it . . . he left my mom in 1978.  Life is funny. Not always haha funny. And it doesn't always work out so famously, obviously.  Like when . . .

36 Years of Being a Stepson

My Xmas gift to Dad this year

My stepmother, my dad's wife of 36 years, wasn't as lucky.  She had cancer all over her body and wicked, degenerative dementia that bode very ill and strained life for her and Dad. She passed, mercifully, in April of this year. I've never seen my father so emotional, and I say that in a good way.  He scattered her ashes on four different beaches, including at the Martha Wood Cottage at dawn with me standing next to him. And because we are now closer than ever before, I was able to be there for him in a way I could never have just a few years ago. We road-tripped five hours to PA for Christmas at my sister's, and we listed to a live Grateful Dead compilation I created for him. Which he loved. Life is funny.

Earlier this year he and I went to see the Mr. Rogers documentary. Front row of the balcony of the old Naro Theater in Norfolk. I absolutely broke down crying from it, and the old man was weeping as well. I've never had such a visceral reaction to cinema anywhere, much less in public. I was so glad I could take my dad to that film.

So . . . things have been on the upswing of late. And to aid my career, and maybe just maybe because I had a chip on my shoulder about squandering my undergrad education on Milwaukee's Best, rugby, and countless hours of idiocy with some of you jive turkeys, I went all Rodney Dangerfield.

24 Years Since Attending College
As I wrote to you in May at the end of my first semester, I enrolled in the College of Knowledge's night school MBA program in January. Insane. This shit is arduous!  Oh, well. Self-improvement and all that crap. I currently have a 3.85 through the first five classes, which feels like wearing another man's suit to someone whose undergraduate transcript is Stephen King-worthy. Hell, it feels like wearing women's undergarments. What? No, what?

And yet there is still time when I need it to expand my productivity. Between work, school, and part-time parenting (and oh yeah, there is still some good times-ing), I'm usually exhausted but still driven by my innate carpe diem as inflamed by lost friends and aging.  Especially when I see this...

5-ash
So there's a dude named Robert Fiveash. I've know him most all my life. We went to school and camp together all the way up. His family co-owns the Martha Wood with mine. He also attended William and Mary's MBA program with our tiny dictator two decades ago. And he helped found and runs a promotional product company called Brand Fuel. Anyway, he's a Superfan. The object of his adoration? The Drive-By Truckers. For those in the know, the DBT's go back to Athens, GA every February and play a trio of shows that (1) assemble their legions of fans, (2) feature up-and-comer opening acts, and (3) raise money and awareness for a suicide prevention nonprofit called Nuçi’s Space.  The shows are called the HeAthens Homecoming.

Robert is a crazy DBT's fan. He hits a ton of shows, is always there at the rail starting at soundcheck, and he spends lots of time on the Three Dimes Down DBT's fan forum.  His moniker is ramonz. And he conceived of and spearheaded a herculean effort to produce a book that's a tribute to this annual event and the people that comprise it. And the proceeds go to the same worthy cause.  It's called The Company We Keep.

And what a book it is! It's huge, 10" x 14". Amazing photos from Homecoming shows, interviews with band members and tons of affiliated people. Read this from Patterson Hood of the Truckers:

I spent an hour looking through it (it will take far longer to actually take it all in) and I was moved to literal tears. I don’t know if anything like this has ever existed in any other band’s community but I was blown away by the enormous amount of work and love that obviously went into its creation. It has made me want to strive even harder to be worthy.

Robert had a lot of help and will take little credit, but make no mistake, this is his doing. He said with a smile it nearly cost him his marriage, but all is well. And it's done. You can buy one here. I did. In fact, I'm mailing another copy to Zman later this week.

I'm blown away by this endeavor. We can do stuff that matters. In a movie not too many people loved but I did, Benjamin Button laments, "I was thinking that nothing lasts, and what a shame that is."  Well, this book and the collaborative efforts that brought it to life will last. And I want something in that vein.

My NOLA buddy Ned released another album this year. As did another guy we graduated high school with, as well as another old friend of mine.  Dave still makes music when he's inspired. Rootsy still makes real music.  And twice he has let me defile his music studio with my vocals and guitar playing. As McManus once posited, "There's nothing that can't be done."

10 Tracks
That's what my goal is. That's what my plan is. Now that I do have a little money in my pocket (so long as I stay away from Pristine Auction), I plan to turn my third floor into a home music studio. And crank out an album's worth of stuff. I have lots of lyrics penned. Let's sample:


Crescent City Sunrise 
Someone said it's darkest / Right before the dawn
I can't tell, said Marcus / From the barstool that I'm on
A painter with a problem / has a breakfast margarita
I slap him five and tag out / And slug down my Abita
Crescent City Sunrise
Just beyond that wall
New day through the window
Serves as my last call

Stagger to the sidewalk
I have to close my eyes
From the bright beams of a
Crescent
City
Sunrise

I was drinkin' with my sorrows / I know that it's a sin
And I was thinkin' about tomorrow / When tomorrow just walked in
Not ready for the day / Wish tomorrow would head back out
Time flies, as they say / When you drink until you black out
Crescent City sunrise
Mine eyes have seen its glory
A streetcar rattles by
All the riders know my story

Shuffling out of Igors
Anybody can surmise
I wasn't doing laundry
Til a Crescent
City
Sunrise

Garden district sunup / It'll steal your breath from you
Am I the only one up / To enjoy this perfect view
A million slumbering dreamers / Couldn't dream this kind of sight
Beautiful day New Orleans / And so I say good night
Crescent city sunrise
Sends me home to bed
Gorgeous and serene
And the one thing that I dread

I'm gonna hear about it
'cause there's really no disguise
Stumblin' in to a
Crescent
City
Sunrise

(Les Coole)

So that's Day 12 by the numbers. I'm still learning something new every day. After the second divorce (D2), I spent two years with a wonderful twentysomething who helped me restore my sense of being worth a damn. And then I let her go, as our roads had to diverge. I blew it up again. Such is life. Since then I learned what "ghosting" is ($#@&!), and I've also spent time in the company of beautiful greatness whose timing was unaligned, breaking my heart for the umpteenth time. Such is life. I'm growing. Learning. Evolving.

Whatever. I'm still the guy that Rob linked to Rhett Miller's 2018 song (see the playlist above) "Total Disaster." I'm still more than capable of doing something really stupid and blowing up my life again. But I'm less regretful now and I'm less worried about scraping myself up off the sidewalk and having another go. Life is hilarious when you get the joke.

Speaking of superfans and Rhett... this is so dweeby of me and the coolest thing ever by him.

So here's where I am on the last day of 2018. I still . . . still . . . have more going for me than 99.9999% of the people who occupy this planet. I've seen some pain, I've unfortunately inflicted it on good people I love, and I'm probably not done with either of those things. But I'm far more aware of my surroundings and more keenly interested in bettering them, so that's a start.  And I'm back to adoring most every minute of what I do.

Thanks for waiting for me to get around to a Day 12 after several years. Thanks for letting me air out my failings and flaws like a Dear Diary moment.. Thanks for meeting up with me for beers the next time I'm in your town.

Anyway, I love Gheorghe: The Blog and all you people. Like for real. As Mr. Rogers would say, 143.

Now back to your regularly scheduled dipshittery.