...and I am what I appear to be
by Scott McNutt
What do you do when, one day, you wake up and look in the mirror, expecting to see a handsome, intelligent, together guy and instead find Homer Simpson gaping back at you?
You say “Mmmm...donuts.” Then you have a beer.
I’m at the stage of life where a breakfast of coffee and aspirin meet my main nutritional requirements, so a side of beer and donuts shouldn’t make a clogged artery’s worth of difference. To what stage of life am I referring? It’s the middle-aged failure stage. My physical condition is best described as “poor,” my mental acuity as “fading,” my financial state as “a joke,” and my career prospects as “the punchline.” This is what happens when you set out to live on your wits and discover you only packed half. Worse, you begin to suspect half was all you ever had.
This is also the despair and resignation stage of life. Which actually should be a breeze for me. Despair and resignation I excel at. Indeed, some friends would say that those two states were all I was ever good at, at least in the sense of driving others to them. So I should be content: I have an avocation. Admittedly, as an avocation, despair and resignation are usually short term and often fatal. But hey, if the coffin fits...
There’s just one problem. I’m getting married.
I know what you’re thinking: “Have you got her tied up tightly?” But she’s not trying to escape. Miserable loser that I am, she wants me. I don’t understand it, either. It’s that whole, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, in health” thing. I tell her I can only guarantee half of those conditions, but it doesn’t matter. This is love.
She’s smart, she’s beautiful, and she’s self-supporting. I’m dull, loathsome, and needy. Yet, she chooses me, still. I’m at the lowest ebb of my adult existence, and I’m the luckiest guy alive.
How can she do this to me? Here I am, poised on the brink of Fitzgeralding myself to death (sans the talent, of course) and maybe snatching a smidgen of post-mortem infamy. Then she comes along and gives me reason to live. Sometimes a body can’t lose for winning. Or die for living.
No doubt some of you are saying, “If you love her, whip yourself into shape, man, or you’ll lose her!” Thank you for sharing another fine specimen of procto-logic.
You think I haven’t thought of that? You think I don’t recognize the danger? My annoying, self-indulgent self-pity must overwhelm her eventually, I think. My constant, nagging self-doubt and self-depredation must drive her away in the end, I am certain.
I’ve willed myself to change. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve taken drugs. Hell, I’ve read self-help books. (Aside: self-help (n.): an industry characterized by the officious showing the oblivious the obvious for profit; see oxymoron.)
None of it works. So I do nothing, immobilized by despair, resigned to her departure.
Despite my fear that I’ll never emerge from this middle-aged failure stage (except upon entering the old-aged failure stage, that is), despite my self-doubt, and most especially despite my whining, she reminds me the “for worse...” thing applies no matter that it never gets better. She’s not leaving, now or later. She loves me unconditionally. And I love her.
Of course, she’s everything, and I’m nothing, so the exchange rate doesn’t seem equal. She hasn’t complained. You think I’m going to?
Is she insane? I would not presume to judge whether she is playing with a full deck. She has a stacked deck, to that I can attest. Still, I always lose at cards. So I’ll stick with the old saying, “Unlucky at cards...” Besides, if mad she is, then moreso am I. Folie � deux, a madness shared by two.
In other words, we are in love.
March 4, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 10
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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