1:43 p.m. - 2005-05-31
Holiday Inn Rant
Barbara and I have been best friends since we were eleven. We met on the Service Council in elementary school. That was a school-sanctioned vigilante group that got to wear these cool armbands with crests that read "SC" in ominous red on black. If you look closely at our sixth grade class picture, there we are side by side proudly brandishing the kind of authority that allowed us to lord it over our peers with phrases like, "Single file and to the right". It is difficult to determine when exactly it was that we lost that sense of personal power and moral certitude, but lose it we did. Barbara also married too young but chose to stay while I left and left. Simply different names for the same lack of courage and self trust. And so our lives, year by year, strangely converge. Weekly we meet after work and, over margaritas, try to unravel the wayward threads so as to finaly weave our lives aright. Weekly, we walk away, stray strands shooting in all directions. But the very act of retelling to one with eyes to see is healing, to one who was there and who, without compromise or judgment, relentlessly remembers.
And so, Barbara and I arrived at my parents home unannounced. She was with me because, at this point, I was genuinely preparing for some kind of soul killing scene. Her getaway car had been left running in the driveway. Few words were spoken. I scooped up my young son and some basic necessities and we were gone. Speeding away in the direction of anywhere but there. Lacking a plan, we ended up on Ventura Blvd, where just about anything can be found. As it happened, we found a Holiday Inn. Having no doubt watched too many episodes of Girl From Uncle (precursor of Alias), I registered under an assumed name. Yes, I really did. Shellshocked from the way my life had been violently overturned at age eighteen and realizing that I did not know my parents any more than they knew me, I was afraid that they would somehow trace my whereabouts and send the police to take my son. I had been raised to think they were omniscient if not omnipotent. So, here's the part that gets really spooky. After I got a room in the name 'Anita Something' and made Barbara promise that she would tell absolutely no one of my location, I went to the local Thrifty's and purchased some permanent hair dye. A mere hour later, I emerged from the shower no longer a fragile blond. I felt strong as a brunette. Strong and anonymous. I thought I would be afraid there in the hotel room as the sun set, never having spent an unobserved moment in my entire life. But instead I felt free. Competent and dark and dangerous and exhilerated and complete and, well, free. I watched the familiar world outside that hotel room transform into a foreign land. A land rich with endless possibilities. A land that seemed to await me as eagerly as I awaited it. Compelling me into a future with no blueprint, no compass and no turning back. No one but Barbara knew where in the world I was but, for the very first time, I felt that I actually knew where in the world I was. In this impersonal room on the third floor of the Holiday Inn, neon from the street illuminating my musings, I was home. The integrity of living within the true north of own heart animated my every thought as I watched my son softly breathing next to me. In the morning, I took him to breakfast. I had no job and no furniture and no money and yet, expectently, I scanned the classifieds for a nice little apartment where I really could come and go.
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