It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive Read Free

looked at the sky, felt the sun on his cheek; picked a dandelion and blew the seeds, watched them scatter through the air and mingle with the bees. Richard wasn’t in the game, as we knew it. He refused to play, except on his own. I always thought he must have felt tortured to always finish last, to have no chance at all of ever being the best, or even to count himself among them. I’d thought, for Richard, gym must have been hell. Looking back at eighth grade, or even last week, I wonder if that isn’t where I’ve been keeping myself.
    I don’t know if Richard’s wandering so freely today, or if his disinterest was completely unfeigned. But for me, as I enter the thirty-ninth grade, I’m going to try to strike a balance between pleasing myself and letting myself off the hook. Between wanting to push myself toward new and better things, and leaving myself free to wander through time as if the rest of humanity had no interest in me at all.
    I’ve always looked at giving up hope as the end of life, and considering where I’ve been, I suppose that makes sense. But what if that’s when life begins? When you become ready to release it. More of a Buddhist way of thinking about things, no? The freedom of no expectations. The joy of no desire. Of course, I don’t know anything about Buddhism, so I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I have a hunch it would be a good thing if I could get to a place where it doesn’t matter if I run all the way around the park or never even make it there. Where it doesn’t matter if I go faster than the two-hundred-pound woman or drop dead on the track. Where it’s the journey that’s important. Where the only thing that matters is whether I knew the sun loved me along the way.

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The Sickest First Kiss
    Somewhere in my early to mid thirties I started, for the first time in my life, to date. I don’t mean I’d never socialized with women before, or that I’d never had an acquaintanceship grow into something deeper. Dating is a term that means different things to different people, with most of the variations determined by context. To some it simply means spending time with prospective partners. To others it’s the term used to describe an exclusive relationship. Still others use it as a euphemism for having sex. When I say that I started in my thirties “to date,” what
I
mean is it was the first time in my life that I started to ask women out regularly, and to go on a succession of dates with a variety of them. I mean it’s when I started to comparison shop.
    I was feeling emboldened by several things, all of which concealed the fact that I had a serious lack of self-esteem. I’d already been a professional actor for about fifteen years, had made a bit of a name for myself in the theater by appearing in seven Broadway shows before I turned thirty, and had gained even more notoriety by quitting several of them. The quitting streak was initiated in 1985 by my first diagnosis with acute leukemia – which, in most circles, is considered unquestionable justification for leaving a job. A recurrence of the leukemia, after reappearing on Broadway in 1988, led to the second quitting episode, not to mention some additional unwanted notoriety. However, the closest I got to fame was from quitting a Broadway play in mid-performance. That premature departure wasn’t a result of serious illness: it was the result of being smacked across the ass with a three-foot stainless steel sword by an alcoholic costar. The rules governing such resignations are murkier than those regarding multiple diagnoses of almost-always-fatal blood disorders. I suspect a few figures in the theater community found my rationalizations for leaving the stage that night to be less than compelling – though many did call to congratulate me and invite me out to lunches where I was encouraged to tell them the whole story. People love to hear everything you’ve got to say on a topic before they turn on you. My